The new year is here, and the blogs are abuzz with speculation about what the next year has in store. Last year was a wild ride, with Social Media (i.e. Facebook) taking the spotlight, alongside Apple's much-healded entry into the mobile handset business with the iPhone. So what can we expect in 2008? Here are my predictions (I'd love to hear your comments)...

In a classic case of "Oops, we didn't think of that!" the fine folks at Facebook have had to do some major back-peddling in response to a huge backlash that resulted shortly after releasing their Beacon ad platform. Because of the way Beacon announces purchases made on participating e-com sites in the Facebook news timeline, friends and family were having their surprises spoilt by this innovative social-advertising model. Imagine logging into your Facebook account and seeing an update that your girlfriend/husband/mom/etc. had just bought a new digital camera at Best Buy - the same one you had hinted at wanting for Xmas. Doh!! Not surprisingly, the public outcry has resulted in a plague-like retreat from the Beacon offering by major advertisers.

Yesterday Facebook announced a new and ambitious platform called Facebook Ads to leverage the social network to become an ad network in and of itself with tentacles that reach out beyond their own site.

After days of rumours, the announcement was finally made yesterday: Microsoft has just paid $240 million USD for 1.6 percent of social-networking juggernaut Facebook, which makes Facebook worth $15 billion dollars. This makes Facebook the 5th most valuable US Internet company (Google is #1, followed by eBay, Yahoo, and Amazon).

Google was apparently also in the running for a piece of Facebook, and there is plenty of speculation going around as to why they were snubbed in favour of Microsoft. The simple reason is of course, that Microsoft had already invested significantly in the social-network startup when they bought the exclusive rights to sell FB's advertising inventory, and they had already agreed to work together on future technology and advertising initiatives.

Well it was only a matter of time before the king of Internet advertising set its sights on the two remaining segments of the lucrative online ad market: mobile and interactive. The ad networks (and A-list publishers) should be nervous.

On Monday, Google put out a press release describing their master plan for the Mobile space: Google AdSense for Mobile. Basically an extension of its text-link offering, AdSense for Mobile is launching in 13 countries: US, England, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Russia, Netherlands, Australia, India, China, and Japan. No word yet as to when it will be available in Canada.

In other news, the search giant is getting set to launch a full-fledged interactive display media solution that is sure to generate a lot of dough for their shareholders. Google's new offering is called Google Gadget Ads and it allows advertisers to create some pretty compelling ads. Google recently graduated from offering basic text links (via the AdSense network) to offer basic display media via AdWords Image ads and Video ads.