What is the point of social media in 2009?

I was reading Louis Gray's 10 Tech Predictions for 2009, and while I think they are all very reasonable ideas (especially real time systems) , they are really (and sadly) relegated to sideshows by another event.

The big thing that happened this year was The Crunch, and just about all Tech events next year will be driven by the impact of markets and cash drying up!

But, as Om Malik notes, the only solid outcome we have seen so far is an almost reckless use of citizen's money to prop up businesses that really, but for the (alleged) mass impact on the global economy, should be left to fail and let the devil take their hindquarters. As Om writes.

In offering money to bailout failed bankers who couldn’t bank, car makers who couldn’t make good cars and chipmakers who have seemingly no business acumen, we stood on the top of the roofs and said: Mediocrity is OK. In the meantime, not one person has been held accountable for bringing fiscal, moral and social Armageddon to our doorstep.

And, I am told by several little birds, that many of these bankers (typically below CXO level, where the public gaze falls) are still rewarding themselves with bonuses this year for this failure.

So how are We the People, whose future income is now being taken and "redistributed" right now to the same people who made all these mistakes, going to control this; to oversee the clear beginnings of - well, lets still call it non-optimal distribution, rather than pork barrel corruption and incompetence?

Social media, in all its guises, has proven itself in 2008 to be very good at fighting for causes - many of them specious causes, it is true - but very powerful nonetheless.

So to my mind, the real challenge for social media in 2009 is to show how it can be used to help We The People manage our own money to the extent that it isn't p*ssed down the same drains where (our) good money went!

If all its good for is organising Frat Boy parties and recording photos of drunk people, or 140 character haikus of your lunch time diet, then what - in this post Crunch world - is its point exactly?

You may feel the above statements are somewhat unfair, but my main point is that we are in post bubble times, so my big prediction is that the frothy bits of bubblenomics will start to unwind in 2009.

Or, put it another way - for Social Media, given that in the Post Crunch world there is much less Adspend and speculative capital around, where will it create sufficient value for people to want to pay for it in one way or another? And if its no good for the big socially mediated issues emerging, then what good is it?

Update - Social media used for responsible applications - what was I thinking