As tradition dictates in what is my first column of the year, I’m going to predict what 2011 has in store in our ever expanding digital universe.

I could just say Google will become the next Microsoft and Facebook will become the next Google but it wouldn’t fill enough column inches.

I could also predict that 2011 is going to be the year of monetisation for social networks and the year where people accept that they have to pay for online content, but neither of those will happen.

Although I suspect a large amount of money will change hands as old media buys new media. Someone has just got to buy Twitter (News International perhaps) and Facebook will go public.

Facebook will become a credible e-commerce platform and SMEs will realise an active fan page is a more valuable online asset than a me-too website.

We will see these two titans of the social networking landscape grow along with LinkedIn, but the second tier networks (MySpace, FourSquare, Orkut, Gowalla) die a slow death as they become increasingly irrelevant.

2011 will be the year the terms social search and social commerce enter the online marketing lexicon as marketers spend an increasing amount of their time getting consumer reviews and social media mentions.

Likewise PRs will realise that bloggers are to be taken seriously and online reputation is more important than getting press releases printed.

Advertising will continue its steady decline as B2B catches up with B2C and works out that no one is paying attention to advertising.

Simon Cowell will buy ITV which will run 24 hour karaoke competitions – no one will buy any of the records.

2011 will hopefully see businesses embrace social media, not just as a marketing and sales channel but also as a core part of their strategy including customer service, recruitment, internal communications and product development.

Companies who block social media access at work will all go bust as utilising employees as online advocates becomes critically important part of any social media strategy.

* Chris Tomlinson is managing director of social media and PR agency Friend Digital