I am not sympathetic towards Paul Chambers one bit. You'd think EVERYONE would know that bombing is NO joking matter anywhere, anymore, anyhow. Not that we'd ever forget 911 but after the recent almost-bombing of an airline on way to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, you'd think people would know better than to say "bomb" and "airport" in the same breath in public, never mind on a worldwide platform like Twitter.

Here's what happened.  Paul Chambers tweeted his frustrations about his England to Ireland flight potentially getting canceled due to snow, by posting something to the effect of "Robin Hood airport is closed, you've got a week to get your act together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high".

What the heck was he thinking posting something SO inflammatory?  I read some blogs where people thought the punishment netted out to Paul was excessive. Paul has been suspended from his job indefinitely, he is banned from Robin Hood airport for life, and his phone, computer, etc. were taken away after he was arrested for conspiracy to create a bomb hoax.

Come on people, let's get real here! A bomb threat is a bomb threat is a bomb threat. After what we're going through across the globe as we fight terrorism, everyone is sensitive to anything that remotely makes us suspicious. And frankly if I had been at Robin Hood airport and had read the tweet myself, I'd be calling 911 and reporting Paul Chambers for sure.

And this reiterates what I always tell my clients and anyone who'll listen to me: THINK before you post something online for the world to read. IF it can lead to jail, unemployment, or trouble with your family, zip it right up errr take a break from your online writing.

Happy New Year to you!

In December 2009, eMarketer released the fourth and last part of it's Business-to-Business (B2B) and On-Line Marketing Outlook series. The series primarily tries to predict the overall on-line marketing outlook for 2010. The predictions are provided by analysts Debra Aho Williamson and Paul Verna.

Here are two predictions from their 2009 fourth online marketing outlook.

Verna predicts that in 2010, twitter will grow into a serious web-based business from merely being an on-line phenomenon. He also predicts that Twitter will also make some money. It's a well known fact that despite tripling its user base in 2009, twitter hasn't made any money despite its the immense (??) popularity.

Williamson predicts that due to the growing integration of social media content with on-line search, social media will become important for businesses in 2010. She says that businesses will find new opportunities for advertising on social media sites and also warns of intensive scrutiny of such efforts by privacy pundits.

Now maybe I'm just darn good at this stuff. Or perhaps it's just simple logic that allows me to arrive at the same "predictions" as the above mentioned "industry experts".

I mean, wouldn't you as a business owner even be able to predict that eventually Twitter founders will monetize their baby (Twitter) one way or the other? They can't not know the power of handing greater than 6M users to advertisers on a platter. And of course social media will become important to businesses. How else can they get viral instant popularity if they have experts like us to help them market them online?

And finally, social networks are great for criminals who want to lurk and read up on every piece of personal detail shared by users. So of course privacy issues will continue to remain high on the minds of not just the site owners but also the people who want to advertise there.

So once again, Happy New Year! And look for more emarketer 2010 predictions (that are more interesting too) coming soon….