eMarketer predictions for 2009 are out. According to David Hallerman, online video will steam ahead rising by 45% in 2009 to reach $850 million. Traditional media (TV, Newspapers) are in for some hurt. Retail e-commerce growth rates will decline however Debra Aho Williamson predicts b2b marketing is coming to social networks.

Expect both MySpace and Facebook to enhance their self-serve advertising systems to allow consumers and businesses to buy and sell real-world goods and services.

With US ad revenue growth slowing, smaller and niche social networks will have a tough time gaining traction and several may close up shop or be acquired by larger players. In addition, marketers that have built standalone social networks tied to their brands will either close them or migrate them to existing social network platforms where they can reach a broader audience.

I’d like to see some eBay alternatives out there and facebook would be very interesting in this regard. Who are you more likely to buy an unlocked iPhone from – an anonymous seller on eBay or a friend of a friend on facebook?

• Facebook weak in Asia, Malaysia still on Friendster
• eBay dark humor and the undertakers iphone 3g

I’ve made an account on most of the social networks however I’m not on hi5. My 4 year old is already fan of the other hi5. My theory is that whenever the adults show up, the cool kids move on to the next party. Maybe the hi5 keg was just tapped?

Facebook and MySpace get most of the press, but another social network out there is growing much faster than either: hi5. The social network is the world’s fastest growing among the top-10 networks in that category, according to June data from analytics firm comScore.

Hi5 grew 79 percent in the first half of 2008 — twice as fast as any of the other top social networks. The site’s unique visitors grew from 31.4 million in December 2007 to 56.4 million in June 2008. Interestingly, hi5, which is headquartered in San Francisco, Calif., says that over 80 percent of its users are outside of the U.S.

via VentureBeat

• comScore: India has fastest growing net population
• India VC up 120 percent

via Social Media

• Small business social media use increasing
• Fast companies use social media

Big Mac Chant

McDonald’s teamed up with MySpaceto create a new jingle for the 40th anniversary of the Big Mac. The original song (two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce…) was created back in 1974. Over 1,000 user created songs and videos were submitted – the winner’s jingle becomes the official Big Mac song and will be featured in a McDonald’s Big Mac TV commercial.

Enter 29 year old Tamien Bain, who held up a McDonald’s at gunpoint when he was 14, was convicted as an adult and served 12 years in prison. He’s also one of the five finalists in the jingle competition (no. 4, the guy with the white tshirt and baseball cap).

via TechCrunch & Adrants

• Cassette tapes still going strong.. in prisons
• Google launches Geoeye1 Earth imaging satellite

Earlier attempts at cross-posting to myspace blogs from wordpress worked initially but caused a few wordpress panics along the way that required turning off that plugin. I looked for another solution and came up with pingPressFM which makes use of the ping.fm API. At first I was concerned that this would update facebook and twitter status with blog posts but it is configurable to update via status, blogs & microblogs. I’ve got status turned off and blogging and microblogging enabled. Right now pingPressFM is updating blogs / microblogs on twitter, tumbler, pownce and myspace.

It does three updates in total. One status update (facebook, myspace), one micro blog update (twitter, jaiku), and one blog update (blogger, livejournal). You can easily configure each of the three ping types in your WordPress settings.

• Cool Skype widget for WordPress
• Cross posting to facebook and myspace