Who killed the Flip? Before you use your new Flip cam, please dust it for fingerprints.

“Hey, Mr. Reporter, you don’t know me but I’ve got something for you. Something huge. Is this line secure?”

Uh, I guess. But it’s pretty crowded at this LongHorn Steakhouse, so I can’t promise you complete confidentiality. Who am I talking to?

“Just call me Deep Focus. Let me ask you something: who killed the Flip Cam?”

Well, you could say Cisco, the company who bought the Flip for $590 million just two years ago but couldn’t figure out how to market it. Or you could just blame smartphones. Now that you can get decent quality video from an iPhone, why buy a single-purpose camcorder?

“Just as I thought. You’ve got the story wrong just like all the others.”

Yeah, yeah. Look, my Texas Tonion just got here, so if you don’t mind-

“Think about it, smart guy. The smartphone argument doesn’t add up. Out of 1.6 billion mobile phones purchased in 2010, only 297 million were smartphones. But people already have cameras that can take video, you say? Fine, throw in digital cameras, that’s another 121.5 million. Some blogger did the math already. You’ve still got over 1 billion mobile phone consumers without any kind of digital video camera. You telling me Cisco can’t figure out how to reach enough of those people to make this camera profitable?”

Maybe Cisco overpaid for Flip in the first place, so they shut it down for the tax write-off. Maybe they just liked the technology more than they liked selling it to consumers. Anyway, who cares? None of my gadget-blogger or tech-reporter friends were that excited about the Flip.

“You nerds are a sliver of a substratum of a niche. Out here in the real world, normal people love a camcorder that can shoot 720p, 16:9, 60 fps video and fit in your pocket. Throw in something like the FlipShare, which lets you watch your Flip HD video wirelessly on a TV, and they just get even more excited. If you ever climbed down out of your ivory steakhouse and mingled with the unwashed, you’d know that.”

But it’s not a convergence device. Everyone knows that’s the way of the future. Maybe the Flip cam was just too simple. Where else could they take the concept?

“Listen, you didn’t hear this from me. But right before Cisco announced they were shutting the company down, Flip was all ready to roll out the FlipLive: a Flip cam that can stream live video to the Internet. Think about that. Cisco announced they were killing the Flip on April 12. The FlipLive was supposed to ship on April 13. Why go that far with a new product, put all that pre-launch work into it, have all the units manufactured and waiting… and then kill it?”

I guess I don’t know. You tell me.

“I… I can’t right now. Not over the phone. But listen, outside that LongHorn Steakhouse, you know that parking garage between the main mall entrance and the Macaroni Grill?”

Yeah, of course. This is like my third-favorite mall.

“Meet me at parking space 809 tonight at 2:31 AM - not a second earlier. Come alone. Make sure you’re not being followed. If you have a gun, bring it. Some very powerful people won’t want you to hear what I have to say.”

Can you give me any reason to believe anything you’re telling me? Any clue? Does this have something to do with patents, or the Golden Shield Project, or-

“Worse. Much worse. Let me just put it this way: what do Jay Leno, water fluoridation, Cats and Kittens magazine, the Amero, reggaeton, the St. Louis Rams, and the sudden mysterious popularity of salted caramel have in common?”

Uh, yeah, good question. Oh, darn it, I just remembered I have a dental appointment at 2:31 AM tonight. Thanks for the call, though.

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