It's December -- and that means plenty of blogging and chatter about the year that's been in social media, as well as what's potentially in store for 2009. (In fact, had Mother Nature not interviewed last week, I would have been doing just that at a Social Media Breakfast 5 in Ottawa.)

This morning, Peter Kim published Social Media Predictions 2009, a crystal-ball-gazing collaboration from 14 marketers.

Here are some of favorite takeaways:

• David Armano reminds organizations Web 2.0 marketing programs need "qualified and passionate people to make them successful."


• Rohit Bharvaga predicts that marketers will shift from expensive focus groups to social media "listening programs."


• Pete Blackshaw, Charlene Li, and Greg Verdino expect online social networkers suffering from "indigestion" (Blackshaw) to shrink their social graph and focus more on the quality of their connections than quantity.


• Chris Brogan eyes a social media shakeout ("lots and lots of consolidation and shuttering") in 2009, as flimsy business models collapse.


• Todd Defren worries that the already reluctant Fortune 1000 companies may keep their marketing spend away from social media "if negative examples outweigh positive examples."


• Jason Falls calls for Google to scoop up Twitter, giving some juice and kick-in-the-pants stability to the "single-most useful communications software and social utility in recent memory."


• Ann Handley suggests that "dwindling budgets suddenly make low-cost social media look like the pretty girl at the ball."


• Joseph Jaffe hails community as the "killer app" for 2009.


• Scott Monty and Andy Sernovitz argue that top-notch customer service will be a requirement for brands that want to rise above mediocrity.


• Jeremiah Owyang predicts that new e-commerce widgets will connect consumers to reviews from "people they actually know and trust."


• Ben McConnell thinks Matt Bacak is headed for a new line of work.

The predictions collection is embedded below through a cool tool called Scribd; you can also download the Social Media Predictions 2009 PDF directly.

Social Media 2009