Cameras lined the steps to the Sheraton in midtown Manhattan, eager to get a glimpse of the headliner at a packed house for the show about to unfold. A new Broadway star? A young lion of Hollywood? Nope. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook arriving to take part in the road show for his company’s initial public offering, wearing, of course, a black hoodie.

With all that demand, you’d think that there would be plenty of IPOs these days. Not so. In fact, we’re struggling through a multi-year drought brought on by tougher regulations and the global financial crisis.

In an October, 2011 report, the IPO Task Force makes several recommendations to the Department of the Treasury on “Rebuilding he IPO On-Ramp” many of which are directed at opening up the availability of IPO road shows.

Consulting a SEC expert friend of mine, I was surprised to learn that interested retail investor aren’t excluded per se from road shows; companies just tend to concentrate their attentions on fund managers whose job it is to buy offerings of new stock. But in these days of inexpensive bandwidth, and low-cost video production, why not open high-demand shows like Facebook’s to the public by webcasting them?

To Facebook’s credit, they have taken a big step in this direction with their online road show, something that is now permitted under new SEC rules:

You can’t call it a webcast, since it’s a canned presentation. Here are my takeaways from the 30-minute video:

• Facebook sees a point when social overtakes search, so watch out Google.
• Great Money Quote from the ice cream guys: “Having people talk about Ben & Jerry’s is a key part of our strategy.”
• People are spending more time online, but online’s share of spend is underrepresented.
• Reach: Facebook has a daily audience reach that is double that of American Idol’s finale.
• Relevance: Facebook says that it can match businesses with people who will buy their products with 90% accuracy, more 2x the average of traditional media.
• Engagement: Facebook helps advertisers establish an ongoing connection with a customer versus a traditional ad, which is one time and one way  
• Social context: People trust personal recommendations more than any other type of purchase influence. What Facebook is doing is word of mouth at scale. Facebook also says that message recall is more than 40% greater with social ads versus traditional.
• Margins have ranged between 34 and 53% over the past few years, which they believe is remarkable since the company considers this period as one of heavy investment.

There’s obviously some great meat here, but there is not much Facebook’s legendary Achilles’ heel: mobile. People are increasingly accessing Facebook via a mobile device

Not much on the mobile issue, other than that the company says that it plans to invest heavily in mobile. I would also like more on Facebook payments, which is currently experiencing robust growth powered by online game purchases of virtual goods.

Of course, the big thing that’s missing is Q&A.  Who’s up for a Facebook-hosted town hall with Mark & Sheryl? It might drive the lawyers crazy, but it would certainly be the road show not taken.

Twitter’s buzzworthy announcement of its “Innovator’s Patent Agreement” could rewrite the tangled web of patent litigation in the technology world. Just to refresh you, he’s what that web looks like for mobile patents alone (source: Reuters):

Twitter is proposing that its IPA can help prevent patents from being used to impede the innovation of others, something that many engineers are worried about.

“The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended.

 This is a significant departure from the current state of affairs in the industry. Typically, engineers and designers sign an agreement with their company that irrevocably gives that company any patents filed related to the employee’s work. The company then has control over the patents and can use them however they want, which may include selling them to others who can also use them however they want. With the IPA, employees can be assured that their patents will be used only as a shield rather than as a weapon.”

There’s been a lot of positive response, including this from VC Fred Wilson:

“In the world of patents, the advantage goes to the Incumbents who can hoard patents and use them to their advantage. The insurgent, three engineers in a walk up in Bushwick, can't even afford the lawyer or the time to file a patent. So it is very encouraging to see an emerging incumbent, Twitter, do something like this. They are saying to the world that they do not intend to compete on the basis of patents and instead they will compete on the basis of product, feature set, user experience, etc, etc.”

The problem is hard to overstate. A Stanford Technology Law Review study found that:

• Internet patents were up to 10 times more likely to be challenged that non-Intenret patents
• Patents on business models were litigated at a significantly higher rate than those on business techniques
• Patents issued to small companies were far more likely to be litigated than those issued to large ones.

Another survey by patent research firm Article One Partners found that the current litigation wave is taking a major toll on technology companies:

• Non Practicing Entity (NPE)litigation in the high technology industries represented 75% of all active litigation matters.
• More than half the executives surveyed reported that NPE litigation increased over last year, with a median estimated increase of 22%.
• More than 80% of IP legal budgets are used for litigation defense activities.
• The majority of overall patent litigation matters take a year or more to settle, with 27% taking more than two years.
• It cost companies an average of $1.1 million to defend a single NPE lawsuit.

At Forbes, reporter Rob Hof sees the Twitter move as a positive step forward, but doubts it will change the dire situation that we find ourselves in:

“Unfortunately, it’s doubtful that Twitter’s proposal will bring a cease fire in the patent wars anytime soon. Too many billions are at stake, and a company will face angry shareholders (as Yahoo did) if it doesn’t pursue all avenues to extract value from its assets. Patents are an increasingly lucrative asset. What’s more, the rise of so-called patent trolls–companies that buy up patents with the sole intention to get companies to pay for licensing them to avoid lawsuits–could make it tough for companies to play strictly defense.”

Fair point. But we need a step forward to get us out of this mess, and to preserve the spirit of innovation and disruption that makes this industry great. Bravo, Twitter. Who else will take up the challenge?

Some eye-popping numbers from Gartner on the outlook for tablets:

• 2016 global tablet sales should reach 369.3 million units
• Apple seen leading market with 169.7 million units by 2016
• Android unit sales seen rising eight-fold over same period

Those numbers are bold enough, but what caught my eye is Gartner’s prediction that Apple’s dominance will be relatively untouched by Microsoft’s efforts to gain a beachhead here:

"Despite PC vendors and phone manufacturers wanting a piece of the pie and launching themselves into the media tablet market, so far, we have seen very limited success outside of Apple with its iPad," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. "As vendors struggled to compete on price and differentiate enough on either the hardware or ecosystem, inventories were built and only 60 million units actually reached the hands of consumers across the world. The situation has not improved in early 2012, when the arrival of the new iPad has reset the benchmark for the product to beat."

Gartner sees Windows tablets as a niche within conservative IT shops:

"IT departments will see Windows 8 as the opportunity to deploy tablets on an OS that is familiar to them and with devices offered by many enterprise-class suppliers," Ms. Milanesi said. "This means that we see Windows 8 as a strong IT-supplied offering more so than an OS with a strong consumer appeal."

 And as the numbers show, Microsoft will gain some traction, but you have to wonder if it will be worth the effort for Redmond:

 It’s worth noting that Gartner estimates that 35 percent of tablet sales will come from the enterprise. So why isn’t there more love for Microsoft. Four letters: BYOD. The “bring your own device” trend will allow individuals to walk iPads into the enterprise.

Gartner also notes that the vendors have not planned their rollouts wisely, pushing hardware specs over platform robustness:

“They are also marketing these features as if consumers know what they mean, as with the Verizon's Motorola Xoom commercial: "Your wife will love the new Tegra 2 dual-core chipset. "Tablets will be much more dependent on ecosystems than smartphones have been and the sooner vendors realize that, the better chance they have of competing head to head with Apple. HP's recent decision to abandon production of webOS products is a clear example of the pressure that vendors are under when trying to sell tablets (see "HP Drops webOS Devices, Creates Potential for Sale or Licensing"). Rather than focusing on higher hardware specifications, vendors should be looking at partnering with content providers to deliver unique and compelling content to be consumed on their tablets. Alternatively, vendors should offer incentives to developers to create applications that fully exploit the capability of the tablet form-factor, to deliver a unique experience.”

Consumers are driven by apps and content, according to Gartner:

Consumers are buying tablets because of what they can do with them, and so applications, content and services, intuitive user interfaces and a good design are the vital attributes that have an impact on user experience and ultimately drive sales, not hardware features.

I think that’s largely true for enterprises: they’ll go where the apps are. That tips the balance in favor of web-based cloud apps.  There’s far less work involved in optimizing a web app for an iPad’s high-res screen and touch capability than building a traditional enterprise client from scratch. So seize this opportunity, cloud vendors and tablets will take you full throttle up.