Six sure things for 2009

Welcome to the Year of Fear. They say 2009 will be difficult, dangerous, maybe even disastrous. But, here at Technically Incorrect, we believe it will be the year that the seemingly impossible will be the most likely to happen.

So here are 6 things that we feel sure will occur in 2009. Notice the vital importance of advertising in each of these surefire occurrences.

1. FACEBOOK WILL BE SOLD TO A NETWORK TV STATION. Oh, guffaw away if you must. But some time this year the folks at Facebook will sit down and realize that they haven't sold much advertising. Again. They will look around, from beanbag to beanbag, at the faces in the room and realize that TV stations are still somehow selling ad space. Best bet to pick up this bottle-fed (no teat showing, as per Facebook rules) baby will be NBC. I mean, if you can sell the Olympics on the basis of NOT showing it live, then you really are the magicians of ad sales.

2. HULU WILL START ITS OWN PORN SITE. I think I read somewhere that hotels make most of their money from porn channels. You know, sad, lonely men hanging around in hotel rooms with nothing better to do than hang around. Hulu will get in on this market. Naturally, the biggest difficulty will be selling advertising around this channel. However, NBC is a major player in Hulu. See Prediction No.1 for details of the network's phenomenal advertising sales skills.

3. GOOGLE WILL BUY TWITTER. Because Google is so committed to privacy, deeply, deeply committed, it will buy Twitter. No, not so that you can merely follow someone around, very privately. No, it's so that you can very privately keep up with other people's Google searches in real time. Mark my words, this is the next growth area. People watching people searching. Very privately. And just think of the advertising opportunities. Ads beamed to you in real time reflecting your real up-to-the-minute moods and feelings. And the moods and feelings of everyone you're following. Cool, huh?

4. YOUTUBE WILL LAUNCH ITS OWN CABLE CHANNEL. You know, it's not always easy to find the videos you really want to see on YouTube. If you look at what people are watching most, it often seems to be soccer matches from Poland or Turkey. So YouTube will launch a cable channel, probably in partnership with hitherto advertising-free HBO, that will feature the finest new uploads: the plaintive Britney fans, the strange college sportscasters, the scorned theatrical wives. It will be like America's Funniest Videos but will last for 24 hours each day. Advertisers will, naturally, flock to this surefire hit.

5. ADVERTISING AGENCIES WILL LAY OFF ALL CREATIVE STAFF AND PRODUCE ADS BY ALGORITHM. You thought this had already happened? Well, almost. Mathematicians have proved that there are only so many new ideas in the world and we've pretty much seen them all. In today's difficult business environment, mathematicians are far better placed to work out precisely what will sell than the hairy, unwashed potheads who went to art school but can't paint a lick. Google has proved itself to be the world's most efficient advertising agency and its greatest problem will lie in keeping its mathematicians out of the clutches of the folks who brought you Tony the Tiger and the Five Dollar Foot Long song.

6. THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER WILL LAUNCH ON THE SAME DAY AS WINDOWS 7. This is perhaps the surest of all our predictions. The two greatest steps forward for mankind will not only be launched on the same day, but will do it in a joint promotion. The Collider's computers will all be running Windows 7, while Windows 7 will be available with a new, free dance video from the Collider scientists. It will be the greatest success in scientific and advertising history.

This is Technically Incorrect, yes, Incorrect, thanking all those who realize that entertainment is far more important than news and wishing you an extraordinary New Year. This post was generated using the Deleterious Substances Algorithm, kindly loaned to me by a chap from Google I met in a local sushi restaurant.