• by Joe Marchese , March 17, 2009

I love hearing OPP when comes to social media. Of course I am referring to Other People's Predictions. The more predictions you take the time to listen to, the more informed you are, because in most cases those predictions become self-fulfilling prophecies. That's because with enough support, social media becomes what people want it to be. This can be good or bad, especially when it comes to marketing in social media. Today I thought I'd share a couple of recent OPPs.

Twitter as a five-tool marketing player: Josh Bernoff, or @jbernoff (http://twitter.com/jbernoff) to Twitterers, makes a compelling argument for why "Twitter Is the 'Five Tool Player' of the Social Web." Josh makes great arguments for Twitter's overall value, and of course it was a conversation with Josh that stoked one of my predictions: "Why Google Will Buy Twitter And Make Billions."

Social media spend will weather the recession: This "prediction" was published by Josh Bernoff's Forrester colleague, Jeremiah Owyang, or @jowyang on twitter (http://twitter.com/jowyang). I put "prediction" in quotes because Jeremiah has really aggregated a number of marketers' perspectives, so you have to give this prediction a little more weight. Read Write Web does a great write-up of Jeremiah's report here: "Despite Recession, More than 50% of Marketers Increase Spending on Social Media." I have to admit that I am more than a little biased in favoring this prediction, so I am interested in hearing your thoughts. Also, increasing spending, as the report points out, is relative. If you are spending almost nothing in social media right now, it's not hard to say you are going to spend more than "almost nothing."

Social Influence Marketing (SIM) goes mainstream: Razorfish's Shiv Singh, @shivsingh (http://twitter.com/shivsingh) gives us not one, but 10 predictions for 2009 in his post "Trends in Social Influence Marketing." As the title suggests, Shiv's predictions center around how social media marketing will evolve into an influence-based model. While I agree with most of Shiv's predictions, one that particularly intrigues me is # 7: "Social influence research will become more important than social measurement." While I agree that it should, can it really come around in 2009? I'm certainly evangelizing for it, but can the marketing industry implement change fast enough?

These are just a few of my favorites. I really want to hear your social media predictions for 2009, too, marketing or not. Comment below and/or send your predictions to me on Twitter @joemarchese (http://twitter.com/joemarchese) and mark them with #SMOPP09 so everyone can see them.