Assuming you're working this week, hopefully you have some time to catch up. If you'll indulge me, I've rounded up what I'd consider the highlights from the past year of my contributions here.

I thought I'd close out another fun year as an alleged Social Media Insider by abdicating the throne upon which I wildly speculate and espouse my crackpot theories, letting readers have their say. (This is only a temporarily abdication. I plan to take back the reins of my -- minimal -- power on Jan. 6.) Here then, social media predictions for 2010 from Social Media Insider readers....

In many ways social media managed to change our thinking about what happened, what's going on, and how the world's changing. I'll focus on 10 ways in particular. Not all are exclusive to the past year, but many of the milestones from the past 12 months may well shape how we perceive the road ahead.

While my colleague David Berkowitz focuses on social media Jewdar, I'm going to focus on another topic of great religious import: social media and the future of Christmas cards. It's a big topic for me this year because, for the first time since I was an adult, I'm not sending any.

"I'm going to write my next column on Cat Paint," I told my wife. She asked, "Is it about how you've become a twelve-year-old girl?"Perhaps. But in a season of social media breakthroughs and brouhahas -- Facebook Connect surpassing 60 million active users, Google and Yahoo rolling out real-time search, Facebook's privacy overhaul, Twitter's Citysearch partnership -- I think we're all going to look back at this time and realize what mattered most was Cat Paint. It's catnip for those who want to understand what the future of mobile social media looks like.

I have a growing sense -- which many of you probably share -- that we are at another inflection point in the rise of social, and even if what's going on now isn't perfect, if we could get a crystal ball and look out a year or two from now, we would be flat-out amazed at where this has all gone. Here are several developments pointing to this accelerating pace over just the last few days.

It's one of the most critical, controversial issues of our time. It's been the subject of more columns than MySpace. Even the Talmud, the great repository of Jewish debate and wisdom, is at a loss to comment on it. Yes, in what's undoubtedly the greatest miracle since the time the Maccabees kept their temple menorah burning with a small jar of oil, the gift of Jewdar continues to shed light on how marketers are targeting their ads.

While social media is among the factors contributing to the demise of traditional forms of news-gathering, fortunately it brings with it an extremely strong undertow of innovation. This trend was best exemplified recently not by anyone at the Federal Trade Commission workshop on the future of journalism, but by the Seattle Times' decision to experiment with Google's Wave to cover a tragic event as it unfolded: the murder of four police officers in Lakeland, Wash., and the search for the shooter .

It sounds so perfect: you put a "share this" button in a banner ad and suddenly even stodgy, old display media becomes social media. Pay for the impressions and get the viral effect as a bonus. It's the future of advertising! There are just two catches to this: it's been done before, and it's not the future of anything. It's a bell, a whistle, or maybe a bell and a whistle if executed well. But it's not going to fundamentally change advertising, social media, or anything else.

Is it just me? Or is this coming Black Friday just the beginning of a bunch of increasingly darker ones for media companies? "S@les are virtual, LOL for Black Friday retailers" says the headline of a New York Post story which makes it known that the Twitter feed Cheaptweet -- one among many aggregating holiday deals -- is spitting out 800 deals per hour. And then there are all the individual retailers using the social Web to get the word out about their holiday promos: Toys 'R' Us, Target, Amazon -- they're all there, tweeting and Facebook-ing their way to …