In a post I did on Christmas day titled Top Google Searches for 4Q 2007 I tacked on the results of the 100th top query on Google which was "psychic predictions 2008 president" and I found a number of predictions for 2007-2008, many that were accurate, or not that far off (read the second half of the post to judge for yourself).

However, one prediction was due to happen in two days from Christmas – today:

The date of December 27th 2007 will prove to be a very important one. I feel that an event of global proportions will occur on this date. At first I felt that this event will be related to military actions, but I now believe that this date concerns a terrorist attack, possibly in Europe.

Gee…that's tomorrow.  Well, I can't tell you if that's correct or not since it's not happened  yet.

Well, an event happened today, a pakistan assassination, that seems to fit this prediction – Benazir Bhutto assassinated (see the actual bhutto assassination video of the aftermath – the bombed out limo is shown after 1:03 minutes from the beginning.   This event, and what surrounds it does seem to fit with the prediction. 

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (CNN) — Pakistan's former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday outside a large gathering of her supporters where a suicide bomber also killed at least 14, doctors and a spokesman for her party said.

Benazir Bhutto greets her supporters at the rally that was hit by a suicide attack.

While Bhutto appeared to have died from bullet wounds, it was not immediately clear if she was shot or if her wounds were caused by bomb shrapnel.

President Pervez Musharraf held an emergency meeting in the hours after the death, according to state media.

Police warned citizens to stay home as they expected rioting to break out in city streets in reaction to the death.

Police sources told CNN the bomber, who was riding a motorcycle, blew himself up near Bhutto's vehicle. Watch aftermath of the attack. »

Bhutto was rushed to Rawalpindi General Hospital — less than two miles from the bombing scene — where doctors pronounced her dead."

Is the event of global proportion? Yes.  Civil War in Pakistan – you know who's hiding there and Pakistan has atomic weapons. 

How this affects the world, I'm not sure – but it can not be good sign – assinations usually aren't good signs (unless it's a tyrant – but even then, it can be argued that assinations create more chaos and instability than constructive results – and that's not very good news for us in the US and maybe for the rest of the world in this case as former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was trying to move to a more "democratic" form of goverment – or so we're told).  

Bresides the fact, it's clear that Benazir Bhutto knew she had a good chance of being assassinated, much as Anwar Sadat did, several years before, in Egypt (see actual footage below).

The New York Times has a story on it the Benazir Bhutto assination too .. Benazir Bhutto, 54, Lived in Eye of Pakistan Storm  that was somewhat more critical – and nothing is  black and white anyway.

In Talk Left -Benazir Bhutto Assassinated, where I first heard of this tragic event, it's mentioned the New York Times story had the a negative slant towards Benazier Bhutto:

"..The NYTimes story is incredibly negative towards Ms. Bhutto and has little analysis of what this means for Pakistan, surely the more important story from the US perspective. A very strange story indeed. WaPo has this:

Bhutto's death is a devastating development, coming 12 days before Pakistanis are set to vote in national parliamentary elections already marked by enormous political turmoil. President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Novembe

r — a move which he said was to combat terrorism, but which was widely perceived as an effort to stave off legal challenges to his authority. U.S. military officials said last week that the terrorist group al-Qaeda increasingly is focusing its efforts in Pakistan."

And here's an assesment of what's going in Pakistan (high alert Pakistan News) that was given recently, before the Benazir Bhutto Assination today – TPM's Spencer Ackerman interviews Pakistan expert Barnett Rubin on the global implications from an interview conducted by Josh Marshall earlier in November of 2007:

I think it's not outlandish to suggest that next year's Presidental Election in the United States will be dominated by a couple of themes - the Sub Prime Mortgage Meltdown, the Health Care Crisis, the Political situation in Pakistan (Bhutto and Pakistan will come up as issues) and finally, the military and economic debacle in Iraq and the failure of the US Inititives in that region.

What's clear to me is the Sub-Prime Mortgage meltdown will get much worse next year – with the potential that 1-5 homes in the United States will have "negative equity" – and that's going to become more of a Presidential Issue than it appears to be right now. 

But this thing that is unfolding in Pakistan now, A Prediction for December 27th comes true – Benazir Bhutto assassinated, while it doesn't get the coverage here that many of the other stories in MSM get – might be the one with the most implications for us, along with the Sub Prime Mortgages melting down and the credit crisis.

In preparation for John Battelle's 2008 predictions – he scored his 2007 Predictions and you can read about those in 2007 Predictions, How Did I Do?

Let's see what his 2008 Predictions contain.

Ok, maybe I should do something similar to Steve Rubel in Charting 2007's Three Big Web 2.0 Trends with my own Web Predictions – I just covered predictions in these two posts A Survey of Predictions for 2008 – so far (I'll try to come our with some of my Web Predictions next week) and earlier in Predictions for 2008 and how I did with my 2007 Predictions but I didn't use Google Trends, or Blogpulse, or anything like that with broad categories.

So…I think I'll do that in the next few days – but before I do, I want to briefly comment on what Steve Rubel predicted:

"….Data: Searches for social networking and news volume both doubled in 2007. However, more recently, the volume has started to show some signs of weakness. Meanwhile, geographically, interest in social networking from India and Singapore is skyrocketing. Search volume for individual sites, like Facebook, appear to track the broader meme.

* Insight: Social networking is evolving from a group of sites into several competing platforms that power thousands of sites. Eventually, we won't think of social networks as sites but as a feature. This data might just be the first sign of such a progression."

Agreed.  Social Networks are quickly evolving and with some kind of Universal sign in, or ID, to import friendships, the particular Social Network might not matter as much as it does now.  For example, now, Going.com has a pretty exciting people recommendation engine built into it's Social Network – but what if, down the line, we all make our own Social Networks from bits and pieces we plug in – much as some generic PC's are built today.  Why not?    Why couldn't we just go to an integrator and ask them to build a Social Network from different applications that talk to each other – and we pay for that – or just build it ourselves.   I think that's the future but I don't know if it will materialize in 2008 – it might take longer.

Trend I: Social Networking

"…Micro blogging fosters connection with less work all while working well with mobile devices. Blogging remains important, however, as the traditional press rapidly embraced blogging, it has encouraged individual publishers to find new ways to spread their influence."

"…The search data seems to reflect what others have said – that web applications are not on most people's radar. This data is consistent with what Microsoft and Apple have said – people like their desktop apps. Web applications are in their infancy. It should be interesting to see if they will remain a niche category in the years ahead. The lack of the ubiquitous connectivity could be a major stumbling block."