Two weeks ago I got rid of my iPhone and dropped AT&T for a BlackBerry Bold 9700 on T-Mobile. My impression so far: I love it.

I have all four of my email inboxes being pushed out to my phone. I can look at them in a single inbox or individually. I can (and do) have different signatures for each email account. Since I’m using Google Apps for my email, I actually have the ability to do things like archive and report spam. It syncs both contacts and calendar items flawlessly with Google Sync, in addition to being able to do it natively with the new BlackBerry OS 5.0. Facebook is integrated directly into the address book, so when people call me I see their latest Facebook profile picture.

Google Talk runs in the background and lets me answer IMs the same way one might answer a text message. Google Latitude constantly updates my location and allows me to see where my friends and family are on Google Maps. When I take a picture, I can send it to Facebook or Flickr with a few clicks from within the camera application. I even got into the Foursquare for BlackBerry beta.

My battery time is now measured in days instead of hours. I can use the Bluetooth connection without restrictions to transfer files or use the phone as a tethered modem. Calls are clear, rarely dropped, and I don’t have to worry about signal strength when I’m at home or work, since I just use the UMA and WiFi functionality.

But the most interesting application was something that isn’t new, just something I wasn’t actually aware of — BlackBerry Messenger (or BBM). For those who don’t know, or have never used it, BBM is a collaborative messaging environment that allows you to create groups of up to 30 other BlackBerry users and participate in real-time chats, share pictures, videos, notes, events, and a host of other things. However, most of these features are relatively new to BBM 5.0 and late model BlackBerry devices, which might explain why I wasn’t aware of BBM previously.

All things considered, BlackBerry Messenger is a really neat application with two huge flaws:

1. It’s too corporate. Your phone is identified by a unique 6-character PIN. No one wants to remember that. The latest version allows you to send people a QR code instead, that will let them add you as a contact or join a group, but it’s far from perfect. Most people still don't know what QR codes are.
2. It’s proprietary and only works on BlackBerry phones.

Those are my only two gripes. After using it for a little while with a few friends, it reminded me of Google Wave and got me thinking… What is Google Wave going to look like on a mobile phone? Could the future of social networking, email and collaboration lie in mobile, BBM style application? A mobile version of Google Wave could bring BBM style functionality to a host of different devices and break down the barriers that have branded it as a corporate communication tool.

Some believe that Facebook is now an integral part of our life. That it will only keep growing, and in a few years time it will be as ubiquous as email.

Those people are wrong. As more people use Facebook, it becomes less useful.

When you first sign up to Facebook, it's not that useful. You have to go out and make some friends. As you add friends, it becomes more useful and more interesting. Marginal utility derived, per user added, is increasing. It becomes addicting. But then it peaks. It peaks, and the trend reverses. The peak is different for each user, and depends largely on the kind of activities their friends engage in on the platform, but at some point the marginal utility per user added starts declining. Then it goes negative. It starts to get so noisy that you start wondering why you are checking it at all.

This problem is not uniqie to Facebook. This is what "killed" MySpace. And this is what is killing Twitter.

When I first started using Facebook I was still in school. Only people with access to a .edu email address could even request to join. It was a quiet platform with the occasional picture of drunken debauchery. You'd slowly add friends as more people came into the platform. I used it mainly for finding people in my classes and getting notes on days I skipped. At the time, there was an application built directly into the platform that let you enter your courses. Finding everyone in a specific class was incredibly simple. At some point this functionality was actually removed and then brought back later by a third party.

What's even more interesting is that those joining Facebook today have no concept of the kind of utility that Facebook was once able to provide. They have no frame of reference. They sign up and by the end of the week they could have 100+ friend requests. They assume that this is what Facebook is, and the way you use it is by saying as much stuff as you can. They are also going to be the first ones to move to a new platform that can provide them the same kind of benefits that Facebook originally provided.

The same thing is happening on Twitter right now. What started as an extremely useful communication tool, has become the noisiest broadcasting medium of all time. Everyone is scrambling around saying, "What's Twitter? Do I need to be on it? What's my Twitter strategy?" Do you need to be on it? No. No, you don't. Even more, there is a touch of hypocrisy in this post, since most people who read this will have found it through Twitter.

This problem with noise is what has me so interested in Google Wave. Direct messaging (email, IM, SMS) doesn't suffer from scale in the same way, and Google Wave functions more along the lines of email and instant messaging. The current model of Facebook, Twitter, et al. is one of broadcasting out everything, all the time, and hoping that the right people read it and respond. With individual "waves" you can create instances with only particular groups of people. You can fluidly add people and drop them. The network can be resized at any point, and one can create an entirely new network with the click of a button.

Help me Google Wave. You're my only hope.

I moved my main domain [here] to Posterous. I'll still be using Tumblr (likely more than I have recently), and you can find my Tumblr blog now located at tumblr.ralphthemagician.com. They've been adding new features hand over fist at Tumblr, which is cool, but there's something about the simplicity of Posterous that I've always liked, yet I've never used it. It's even more simple than Tumblr. I particuarly like the part where you can update everything via email. Everyone berates email as being "old," yet everyone has one. In spite of drawing a venn diagriam I'll just say this: You can't sign up for Facebook or Twitter without an email address.

This got me started on thinking about what kind of interactivity you could do simply via email. Why don't we talk about email more? Everyone is keen on finding new ways to integreate with Twitter and Facebook because they amplify an interaction through a person's social network, but if something is interesting people will talk about it anyway. The most engaging (and talkworthy) experiences are often those that require as small a barrier to entry as possible. That's what's so neat about Posterous. You don't even need to sign up to start using it. That, in and of itself, is an interesting twist on user aquisution flow that we don't see much anymore.

One of the other interesting things about email is that it's trackable. Very trackable. On of the more interesting studies I've read this year was the one done by IBM on the value of social networks. IBM has been working with MIT's Sloan Management School and NYU's Stern Business School to find out just how valuable an individual in a person's business address book is. They've done this, not through some out-of-the-box service, but through real regression analysis, and they've come up with a value of $948. You can read more about this research project here.

Some people think that email is dead – that email is being replaced by the inbox on Facebook. I don't think so. If anything, email is evolving. Perhaps what's dead are the POP and IMAP protocols, soon to be replaced by Google Wave or whatever comes next.