I'm anticipating big things in 2010 when it comes to social media. Over the last couple of years, the social media scene as moved from infancy and childhood into adolescence and is rapidly approaching maturity.

Until the middle of 2009, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and their ilk were seen as the toys of either uber-geeks or the young. However, a tipping point was reached and suddenly everyone was either on Facebook or at least had made a decision to not be on Facebook. A lot of this was driven by our tabloid society's fascination with looking into the private lives of celbrities. As soon as the rich and shameless were letting us into the inane details of their private lives we were hooked.

The burst of traffic that the celebs fuelled was phenomenal. Sure, the number of Twitter and Facebook accounts that wither from abandonment is around 30% after three months but the growth rate seems to be outstripping the mortality rate.

The recent earthquake in Haiti (I have a sponsor child there and have no news from the aid agency yet) highlights that social media tools can be used to great effect in mobilising donations of money and goods, as well as sharing images and on-the-ground reports of what's actually happening. Similar things happened last February during the bushfires that engulfed vast swathes of Victoria, my home state in Australia.

While Barack Obama's Twitter debut, from Haiti, was interesting and will probably make an interesting Trivial Pursuit question one day, it's significant as the President of the country likely to give the most aid and support to Haiti saw it as a worthwhile communications channel.

I suspect that 2010 will see more businesses use Twitter as part of their formal company communications strategy. It will become a common way for disemminating press releases, company news, special offers and other interesting tidbits.

2010 will be the year that social media really grows up.