I just read Michael Arrington’s heartfelt post at TechCrunch this morning titled “Some Things need to Change” and I’m sad that some people are getting to the point where they’ll spit in  Michael Arrington’s face if he doesn’t write about them, or threaten his life, as he mentioned in the post.

Arrington does play rough with role at TechCrunch.com, he is often very opinionated, but he provides really good content and he loved what he was doing.

Lately, his job doesn’t sound like much fun, to be totally honest, and he’s right to take a pause.  It makes me wonder if it’s better not to be famous -then to be famous enough, make enough enemies, to have people hovering around you, constantly ready to strike out, and at unpredictable moments.

But let’s bring in the Economy, lousy finances all around; this will push people off the edge; people are often on the edge, you know. Times are tough, really tough, and about to get even tougher.

Now is not the time to make enemies if you can avoid it - people are on edge - and it doesn’t take that much to tick them off - and I think that’s what Micheal Arrington found - when he was in Munich.

I’m sure he’ll have a great time in Davos - but Davos is  a walled garden - a bunch of elites and influentials - getting together to talk how private industry failed and the Governments must now rescue us all - while they have parties upon parties to go to - I’d sooner read Jeff Jarvis’s writings about Davos than anything else - he tells it like it is in

Davos09: A crisis and failure of leadership

, and hopefully, I’ll get a chance to say hello to Jeff Jarvis at SocComm next month (going to the VIP dinner the night before would be nice, too - we’ll see).[qwidget question="65"]

Getting back to Michael Arrington’s unfortunate experience in Munich yesterday - t o some people, the stakes got so high to be noticed, that TechCrunch became a decider, but maybe, too important.  But, on the other hand, isn’t that what TechCrunch strove to be?  An influencer.

A lesson.

Better to not be so famous or infamous that people want to spit in  your face, or throw shoes at you!

Here’s the first group of predictions that I think may happen in 2009.  To the extent I can, I will site information that lead me to make the predictions.

1. The price of a Barrel of Oil will settle at $60.00 for most of 2009.

Posted last week on Downturns are Predictable - at least this one is (was) even as OPEC Looks to Halt Falling Oil Prices but cutting back on production by up to 2 million barrels a day.What I think we’ll see is Oil staying stable at 60 dollars per barrel.

2. 2009 is going to be a Bad Year for Starbucks and NetFlix

People who are downsized, and that’s more and more of us, see Starbucks and Netflix as luxuries - visits to Starbucks will be down by about 20% in 2009 - leading to more cutbacks in employees, benefits and stores.  Other chains that are more Fast Food may not be as affected, with reductions of ~6% ( See Silicon Alley post Laid-Off, But Not Laying Down: Part One)>

3. George W. Bush will be acknowledged as the worst president in this nations history

I don’t think this is a hard prediction to make -

W. has started with everything going for him -  came into power with a record Surplus and nothing much happening and managed to turn great circumstances into 9/11, Iraq, and a ton of scandals. meanwhile, Barack Obama, as the first Black man to inhabit the White House - inherited all this extra work to do - just to clean up the MESS he’s left with from the outgoing administration.

4. Deepening distrust of Wall Street and it’s reason for existing and functioning. (note: many of the financial changes will start in 2009,but not necessarily take place till a year or two later).

There’s already been a lot written over the last few weeks about The Madoff Economy along with the incredible greed and incompetence of Wall Street experts - as 2009 continues - more transparency into Wall Street will be demanded - however, this will be very difficult to enact.

In fact, it’s going to be unclear how anyone, who doesn’t already have a lot of money to invest, will generate any kind of reasonable profit through Wall Street and the American Dream, for the time being - at least, parts of it, are going into hibernation.  There will be no way to make a big profit for most people; we’ll more be looking just to make an average living -and  we’ll have to live with Life Without Bubbles for a while.

Besides, just take a look at the Bush Era Investment Strategy from Talking Points Memo:

…. the above chart of the last eight years shows that we have been living in a financial version of Bizarro World where up is down and smart is stupid.

Meanwhile - Bush’s Tax Break May Have Helped Cause Housing Bubble

5. in 2009 we’ll have a second wave of financial institutions fail as more loans reset. The entire financial system will be on life support and uncertainty will grow on how we’ll emerge from it -

Wrote Downturns are Predictable - at least this one is (was) and I posted this video from 60 Minutes about a second wave of Bank Defaults coming; last year and into 2008, Sub Prime Mortgages were resetting - and I’m told this is what set off the financial problem we’re having.  In fact, this is part of the reason, I bet, that Banks are holding most of the $700 Billion dollar bailout instead of loaning it out, as Banks usually do.

Due to the deteriorating Economy next year - Obama’s first, second and third stimulus packages will end up extending unemployment insurance and food stamps indefinitely, at least, for the next 2 to 3 years and the benefits for food stamps and unemployment will go up, somewhat.

Right now Universal Health Care hasn’t been formally proposed, as such, but UHC will be proposed as one additional way to stimulate the economy and make it easier to hire and maintain the workforce.

In addition, a number of proposals will be seriously examined where Americans reduce or eliminate their debt through public service programs and community activism; many of these will also provide stipends.

As a result, the Government will be

- paying mortgages for those who can’t.

- stop mortgage loans (see above) from resetting.

- propose the creation of a new currency to replace the ailing dollar.

-housing homeless familiesaround the country, starting in 2009

That’s about it - I know there will be more - and I’ll write about it and publish the information if and when I have more to share.

I’ll have my Web Analytics predictions published here, in a couple of days.

BlogHer is presenting at this session.

Blogging a daily part of life, blogs are mainstream. BloHer - people are spending less time watching TV and reading blogs, instead.

Definstion of a Blogger is changing and Social Media has fundamentally changed the way we communicate.

Why are people “there”? Social Media, which used to be just a set of tools, now have changed how we communicate.

Also, most people in the Blogosphere consider their online friends as real friends. Many BlogHer bloggers blog for their children, to record the story.

If you look at most bloggers that are successful they are “driven” and they feel need to say what they are saying regardless of what they are paid, or not, and they’d write anyway; Heather Gold added, that is why people are interested ( Boing Boing, TechCrunch, Beth Kantor - who I recent met at Emetrics Summit DC ).

The Power to be Heard; The Evolution of Community. We still trust People.

How can you be TrustWorthy?

How you can represent youself as a person and still represent your Brand.

Fleishman Hillard - Blog Relations Case Studies

- Tamiflu case study - a blogger who was also a contending for American Idol, came down with the Flu and was offered TamiFlu and blogged about it. Target person who already had the flu.

- David Beckham RAZR2 Campaign - you need to offer not just the blogger, material, but their readers, too, so they can particapate and voice their opinions.

- Purdue Perfect Portions case study. 1.5 million consumer impressions, 59% of interested bloggers requested coupons, 50% wrote positive reviews. One blogger produced 2 videosinvolving cooking Perfect Portions with 2000 views on YouTube.

My Takeaways - this is another good session suggesting you need to think about bloggers readers, indentifying influential bloggers for a subject first, but thinking about the end goal, all the while.

What criteria do you use to identify influntials?

I came up with an idea of a method by which you identify a community where the blogger is in, then do additional research to find out how influential a blogger/blog are in that community (that might require offline data).

Fleishman Hillard uses Collective Intellect, Radian6, one other tool I can’t recall the name of, and a inhouse tool that rates a keyword against it’s use in an online community.

While writing this post, my thoughts go back to Radian6. I got an email on Sunday, that was very untransparent, not well explained, offering to cleanup free accounts, including mine. No reason or advanced warning was given, though one could guess, the reasons might be tied to new partnerships Radian6 just entered into, which might suggest they no longer wanted or needed blogger feedback …. But they did not explain any if that (the real story, in my opinion).

So, until this week, I had access to Radian6, and while it was a good product, Radian6 didn’t really provide data to me in structured way that could be most useful to a Web Anslyst.

Nevertheless, I’m grateful for the 6 months, I had use of it.

Yet, one thing does bother me about the Radian6 “cleanup” of accounts, and to me, it’s somewhat representative of many Social Media firms, who, while they claim to provide excellent tools, including Radian6, still don’t communicate well, openly, honestly and are not as transparent.

In the case of my “account” and their “cleanup”, Radian6 didn’t explain why they were doing it, if it applied to all of the free trials they set up, or just some of them, or what the criteria was, in order to make those choices. That bothers me.

It means, as far as I can tell, Radian6 failed to practice openness, that they designed their tool to “monitor”.

I’m my case, Radian6 allowed me to use their platform to monitor other people’s conversation, but did not
have time or organizational will, to have a conversation, with me. I see that as an unfortunate oversight, a mistake.

Compete.com made a similar mistake, several months ago, but once they realized it, quickly changed course.

Compete engaged in conversation, and, they listened.

Providers of the new social media platforms and tools, sometimes they fall into talking the talk, without “walking the walk”, they are not transparent about motivations or communications (with Bloggers?). Compete got it right, so far, Radian6, didn’t.

But in Social Media, should not a Social Media platform provider be good communicators too?

It appears not to be the case, all too often, but then, you could say the same thing about Web Analytics providers, and even the WAA, whose Board, I sit on.

And, Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Perhaps the old saying “the first will be last and the last, will be first” applies here, too.

I believe, we (and I include myself here, as a WAA member) who provide the “tools”, who embody “the way”, we need to also practice openness, transparancy AND, in the case of Web Analytics, the ability to “measure” and provide “insight”, that our audiences have the right to expect of us and hold us accountable for.

Enough said, missing the next session while expressing myself on this one.