In an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal about an alliance being discussed between Facebook and Nokia, came news about the pair working on a deal to deeply integrate the hot social network with the handsets of the world’s largest maker of mobile phones.

Although BoomTown has seen this movie before–a similar mobile deal with a Nokia (NOK) investment in Facebook was being bandied about a year ago–expect more noise than ever when it comes to social-networking sites and mobile devices in 2009.

As you can see from the chart below, Facebook ran past MySpace in the number of unique visitors via mobile phone in the early fall of 2008 and kept climbing.

Said the Journal article: “In December, Facebook had seven million U.S. mobile users, compared with MySpace’s 5.7 million, according to Nielsen Co.” (Full disclosure: MySpace is owned by News Corp. (NWS), which also owns Dow Jones, the owner of this site.)

And, indeed, to get this kind of traction, Facebook has been very busy ferreting away to get a presence on all the big cellphone makers, so far mostly by building its popular Facebook application for smartphones like the BlackBerry from Research in Motion (RIMM) and iPhone from Apple (AAPL).

Facebook–the Journal piece said–has also been talking to Palm (PALM), which will launch its new Pre smartphone in the spring, and Motorola (MOT), about being integrated into their operating systems too.

The race to be present on mobile devices by everyone and their Internet mother has gotten all hopped up with the introduction of so many smartphones of late, since these devices make any Web app experience much better.

And consumer uptake of these kinds of phones, with big screens and multitouch capabilities, is widely expected to dramatically increase over the next five years,

But here is the dicey money–or nonmoney, actually–quote from the article:

“As with most of the cellphone-software industry, Facebook has yet to find a way to generate meaningful revenue from its mobile services, which include text-messaging features, a mobile Web site and downloadable software. But the number of users accessing its site from phones has grown.”

Oh dear–that roughly translates in Facebook-speak to friending without benefits, with costs rising without much (or any) revenue coming in, to speak of.

Of course, many would argue that both Facebook and MySpace, as well other big players, have to still play hard in the mobile market to gain users–given that consumers are on the move more than ever, digitally-speaking–even if it takes a while to see financial results.

So while efforts by mobile advertising services, such as AdMob, are trying to make that happen and are definitely promising, it’s still a game of growth and not revenue or, of course, profits.

[T-shirt image, courtesy of Zazzle.]

While Jackson runs a small operation, he uses his Web site, YouTube videos, posting to wikis and other online tools in his effort to build a small group of disgruntled investors and offer a “Plan B.”

Zander, who appeared at our D3 conference, might want to be careful. Jackson craftily asked Semel at the Yahoo meeting–see my post on it here and the video from it below–whether he had the “fire in the belly” to continue as CEO at the troubled Internet giant. At the meeting, Semel answered with a hearty yes, but was gone soon after.

As of yesterday, Jackson now has a lot more fodder in his fight with the telecommunications-equipment maker, when Motorola warned of weak shipments of cellphones and said its mobile-devices division would lose money for the year.

With the stock in the tank, management turmoil, a lackluster product line and rumors of a Zander exit, let us not forget the recent explosive launch of the iPhone to cause even more agita at the company.

But let Jackson take it from here with his recent video on Motorola, followed by mine from the Yahoo board meeting in June:

Roger McNamee is very bullish on the iPhone. “It’s the most exciting thing in years,” said the longtime Silicon Valley investor. “With Apple’s identity, I think it will be spectacularly successful.”

This, of course, is an interesting product for McNamee to cheer for. Because last week, Elevation Partners, the high-profile private-equity firm that counts McNamee and also U2 singer Bono among its partners, sunk $325 million of its $1.9 billion fund to buy one-quarter of Palm. The maker of the Treo smart phone, of course, could take a big hit if the iPhone lives up to its hype and dominates the market for high-end, heavily featured mobile devices.

Still, McNamee, whom I interviewed here a few weeks ago, keeps reeling off a bunch of non-Palm smart phones he loves–he tries all of them and often wears several in high-tech style (not!) on his belt.

“I loved the BlackBerry Pearl, and Motorola and Samsung have done some cool stuff and I liked a lot of the features on Helio’s new Ocean,” he said. “And that iPhone will probably be a huge hit does not bother me at all, because this is not a zero-sum game.”

McNamee’s theory is simple–although only a small percentage of all phones sold are smart phones, he expects that to eventually be 100%, because, he posits, “in the end, what matters is what you carry on your body.”

So, even if Palm, which is a small player compared to competitors like Nokia and BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion, comes in third or fourth, that, said McNamee, is “not so bad.”

Not that he expects that kind of also-run status for Elevation’s investment. So to help buoy Palm, along with the big pile of cash, he will also join the board and has brought in two former Apple executives, too–former CFO Fred Anderson and former hardware head (think iPod) Jon Rubinstein.

Anderson is also a partner at Elevation and Rubinstein will serve as executive chairman and also run product development at Palm.

“We offer committed value insight and want to be a partner to management and shareholders, but, most of all, we want to help foster a culture of radical innovation,” said McNamee. “I am a huge believer that you have to be able to experiment to be able to innovate and you even need permission to do so.”

The $325 million buys a lot of permission, of course, and was, said McNamee, an unexpected opportunity. The deal was hatched about seven months ago, when McNamee was called by Palm CEO Ed Colligan, who was seeking good advice about Palm’s options.

While McNamee admits he was not a regular user of Palm products, although he did try them out, he was impressed by Palm’s years of large accomplishments compared to its size.

Nonetheless, the company has been under a lot of pressure to perform better and also do something to lift its lagging stock price. With a huge hoard of cash and even the possibility of being sold to a bigger player, Palm was receptive when McNamee proposed a different tack.

Under terms of the new restructuring deal, still to be approved, Palm’s existing shareholders will get almost $1 billion in cash (the money from Elevation, some new debt and cash from Palm’s kitty) to drop their stake to 75%.

What McNamee said he is buying is a company great at both software and also hardware, which he thinks need to become even more tightly integrated to make products seamless.

“All the really successful products are like that, because someone has to take responsibility for the whole thing,” said McNamee. “And product change has to be the rule rather than the exception… with the goal, of course, to have an incredible device everyone wants to own.”

That might be the goal, but Palm’s latest device, unveiled at D5 last week by Palm’s co-founder and top product guru Jeff Hawkins, called the Foleo, was not well received.

The “phone companion”–which sounded naughty to me when I heard it described thus–was thought by many I spoke with to be too large and not feature-rich enough to be useful.

McNamee understands this, but said Foleo was only a starting point. “It is a good thing for a company to try new form factors, and Foleo is an excellent first step,” he said, even though he admitted the device probably does not represent a very big market.

But he liked the effort involved in its conception.

“Innovation is not a matter of always hitting a bulls-eye on the first shot,” he said. “So I hope we’re there to help Palm be able to keep trying.”

Take a gander at the results of an online survey of U.S. customers below by Solutions Research Group.

Three-quarters of those “definitely interested” are men, and 94% are between 15 and 49 years old, with an average age of 31. Almost 60% finished college, and those interested have a $75,600 annual household income. Close to half, no surprise, live in New York and California.

Most interestingly and perhaps a bit ironic, about half of those surveyed did not own an iPod.

The iPhone will be the splashiest mobile introduction since the Motorola StarTAC caused a frenzy among the geek set when it was debuted on January 3, 1996. (I was actually one of the goony people who lined up at the Consumer Electronics Show that year to gaze at the phone that was suspended in a clear box, as if it were the Hope Diamond.)

The iPhone is certain to cause similar behavior when it goes on sale at AT&T stores at the end of the month at a hefty price of $500. Between this and the release of the seventh and final “Harry Potter” book–“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”–on July 21, it will surely be the summer of long lines outside stores.

The late-night television host is involved with Demand Media, the user publishing-and-content platform, in its new .tv initiatives, and he talked about the state of the video market with Demand’s CEO Richard Rosenblatt, MP3tunes CEO Michael Robertson, Sling Media head Blake Krikorian and YouTube Co-Founder and CEO Chad Hurley.

Their chat was mostly about the massive impact video is making and will continue to make in the coming year, especially related to giving consumers a lot of leeway and control via tech tools. “You have to give [users] everything they want, anywhere they want,” said Robertson. “… But just because everyone has a Webcam, it does not mean it will result in good content.”

Sling’s Krikorian was more positive. “There will be a democratization of production tools,” he said. “And [traditional media companies] are going to be giving up ground. It’s just a question of seize the opportunity.”

Hurley said YouTube intended to do that in the year ahead in the mobile market especially, given that his less-produced trove of user-generated video “look a lot better on the phone.” He declined to talk specifically about the $1 billion lawsuit that media giant Viacom is waging against YouTube, which was recently purchased by Google for $1.65 billion, even as Robertson prodded him by welcoming Hurley into the “10-digit lawsuit club.” Robertson’s former company, the MP3.com online music service, was the subject of earlier copyright lawsuits.

“We have a bigger vision,” said Hurley. “We have a big opportunity ahead of us to find solutions to monetize video and create a new market.” But he was mum on what those ad solutions will look like. “We’re experimenting,” he said.

Rosenblatt was the most visionary of the lot, though, predicting the rise of a more vertical Web and “microcommunities” that people will join. “People want their own channels,” he said. “I do believe users want more choices.” That means, he added, that the mass-media plays that Hollywood specializes in would be under siege.

But it was Daly who managed to be most pithy about that trend. Speaking for Hollywood, said Daly, “The Internet scares the crap out of us.”

Another surprisingly entertaining speaker was Motorola’s CTO Padmasree Warrior, who was there to talk about the cellphone maker’s aspirations beyond the device. She also stressed “personalcasting,” and noted that “individuals have choices and preferences and the device should know those preferences.” She also said mobility was the biggest trend she saw, using a rapidly blinking dot shown on the screen to represent cellphones bought worldwide (32 every second; that’s 2.7 billion mobile devices, more than three times the number of personal computers). That means, she noted, that companies like Motorola had to cozy up to content folks. “As CTO of Motorola, I never thought I would be in Hollywood,” she said. “I am a geek.” Indeed.

I also moderated an opening panel this morning called “Breaking News and Analysis 2.0″ with Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor of the political powerhouse site Huffington Post; Alan Citron, general manager of the gossip site TMZ.com; and Kevin Rose, founder of Digg. The conversation, which you can see streamed off the OnHollywood Web site, centered on the mainstream media’s challenges from outfits like those run by the three panelists. Huffington, as usual, was full of quips, especially when talking about the need to stop making the online/offline distinction. She compared it to the false choice between “Gilligan’s Island” hotties MaryAnn and Ginger. “You should have a threesome,” said Huffington.

Rose was probably glad to be in a quieter venue after yesterday’s noisy controversy over the removal of stories from his social news site that contained a secret DVD encryption key. The company’s lawyers advised execs at Digg that it might be illegal to have published them. The purging caused a revolt on the site by its very active, First Amendment-wielding users, who flooded the site with stories about the key. Rose backed down–did he really have a choice?–and in a blog post on Digg wrote, “We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”

He reiterated the sentiment at the conference, which garnered applause, even if Digg might actually die trying.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google (owner of YouTube).