The future is happening now.

At the last Web 2.0 Summit, Marissa Mayer Google’s VP made the announcement of a new Google Labs feature called Social Search.

This Month has been all about the integration of Search and Social Media.

First was Bing, announcing its deal with Twitter and Facebook, and now is Google with Twitter and more importantly with Google Social Search.

Google Social Search is an experimental feature that helps you find relevant public web content from people in your social circle, when you’re signed in to a Google Account.

For example, if I search for [ restaurants ], and restaurant reviews by one of my buddies may appear more prominently in my results.

You can join the Social Search experiment at http://www.google.com/experimental

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Eric Schmidt’s talks to CNBC’s Bill Griffeth clarifying the buzz around Google taking over Twitter and answers interesting questions as:

- Insight on the economic downturn – How does becoming green makes Google more profitable?

- The future of communications systems and mobile advertising,

- Is Google buying Twitter?

- Neither Co-Founders Page & Brin, and Erik were given bonuses

- All forms of Advertising will be affected by financial boom.

What’s your opinion?

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As a fun exercise, below a list prepared by AdAge with Digital Predictions from 2007 to 2008 that didn’t happened

Digital Predictions That Didn’t Pan Out

1. ONLINE ADVERTISING WILL GROW 29% IN 2008

As late as November 2007, forecasters predicted a huge year for online advertising in 2008, and stuck with it even as the economy started to stumble. Their rationale: Even if the economy takes a dive, online ads won’t. In fact, online will benefit from a recession, as marketers move spending from TV to cheaper, more measurable media. Well, online advertising did grow in 2008, but just 15% in the first six months of 2008 and 11% in Q3, according to the ever-optimistic Internet Advertising Bureau.

Neither Facebook’s nor YouTube’s importance to marketers matches its scale on the web. YouTube’s challenge is to figure out how to add scale to non-scalable promotions. And Facebook’s challenge? That’s perhaps summed up best by Ted McConnell, Procter & Gamble’s interactive guru: “What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?”

At the outset, the News Corp.-NBCU joint venture had only two things going for it: lots of good content and rock-bottom expectations. It was, after all, another attempt by big media to create a consumer web destination. But Hulu became the sixth-biggest video site in the U.S. and allowed skittish advertisers to put dollars against trusted TV brands — at a higher CPM than TV.

It’s no wonder it’s a perennial prediction — every year Digg does seem to do a little acquisition dance with someone. This past year it tangoed with Google but came up empty. Instead, it settled for raising a whopping $28.7 million Series C round.

Despite myriad attempts (remember the massive hype around the far-too-beta Cuil?), Google has only grown share, and no one has emerged as any sort of legitimate challenger in the search space. In fact, some would-be challengers have shifted tacks, because going up against Goliath has proved impossible. Person-assisted search site ChaCha, for example, is now pushing itself as a mobile product rather than straight web search.

This didn’t happen, but whoever made this prediction probably deserves a mulligan. That’s because a major daily newspaper did go all digital (The Christian Science Monitor), but it won’t happen until April 2009. Now, CSM is a special case with a different audience and economics than your standard daily. But there, too, it almost happened. In January, the East Valley Tribune, a 100,000-circ daily east of Phoenix, will go down to four days a week. The paper fired 40% of its staff (142) and will focus on digital.

You’ve been hearing that prediction since 1996, and every year people trot it out again. Sure, there were lots of advertising milestones this past year: Apple’s 3G iPhone and App Store changed the way people think about mobile devices; the much-anticipated Google phone debuted; and touch screens became a staple of new phones everywhere. But mobile advertising remained a blip on the total marketing radar. Maybe 2009?

There was reason to believe it would. E-book readers have been hyped since the late ’90s to less-than-middling success. Amazon’s version, the Kindle, started racking up fans so devoted that they volunteered to show off their devices as part of Amazon’s “See a Kindle in Your City.” In October, Oprah delivered Amazon a coup when she endorsed the product on her show. Since Amazon hasn’t broken out Kindle sales, it’s hard to know how successful it is, but one thing is clear: It’s far from a flop.

It was a tantalizing prediction to make: In a year when the striking writers had brought Hollywood to a halt, an explosion in web-originated content would accelerate the shift of dollars away from the tube. One problem: It didn’t happen. The networks got increases from advertisers, and online video took a pittance in advertising — perhaps $505 million if you believe eMarketer.

Nobody could have known the magnitude of the economic implosion. But few expected to see Yahoo stock fall to $11.12 from $23.72 or eBay to plummet to $13.47 from $32.49 or ValueClick to drop to $5.86 from $21.70. Back in January, J.P. Morgan’s Imran Khan predicted a 34% earnings-per-share rise for major internet stocks. Needless to say, it didn’t happen. Google didn’t hit $1,000. And it didn’t cure cancer, either.

Do you want to guess/risk a prediction for 2009? What it’d be your prediction?

I’ll start it off -

1) Twitter is going to show it can generate revenue using a mix of paid subscription, supporting advertising in their apps and API access for developers besides an integration with other social platforms. Everything based on practicality, usability and usefulness .

2) Social Media Myths will be broken

3) Danny will convince more people to start blogging

More on 2009 predictions on ReadWriteWeb, and Servant of Chaos

How about you, any 2009 prevision?

cheers

Lucio Ribeiro

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