My list for top stories of 2009

Marketing is psychology with a purpose. Our job is to understand the ebbs and flow of human behaviour. That's why I have a Facebook and Twitter account, scan BBC and New York Times and CTV news, browse WIRED, Fast Company, Stanford Philanthropy, Media Post, and meander through Google....
So, on the eve of 2009, I wandered through a few sites to understand the past from the perspective of the masses....
1. Michael Jackson died. (although Twitter beat MJ in top searches for 2009)
2. The economy collapsed, teased us into thinking it was reviving and slumped back into recession.
3. Social networking has marketers in a flurry. Facebook overtakes My Space (officially) and Twitter captures the imagination if not the dollars.
4. Obama won the Nobel Prize (for not being President Bush, according to the CBC)
5. A British teenager painted a 60 foot penis on the roof of his parent's million pound mansion (they didn't notice for a year).... one of the most searched stories on BBC for 2009
6. Warren Buffet gave each of his children $1 billion in shares for their charitable foundations. (Great story, by the way)
7. The Swine Flu changed the way we greet one another (a kiss instead of a handshake), cough (into the elbow) and wash (stocks in Purell soared: Imagine a Touchable World)
8. Dan Brown struck again convincing millions of North Americans to search for the Lost Symbol (either in hard cover or as an e-book format in one the many new e-reader formats... I read Coupland's Generation A on my Blackberry... it seemed fitting.)
9. The auto industry in North America sat up and took note of the competition -- seeing as most of the cars on North American roads were foreign.
10. Susan Boyle dreamed a dream and transformed Simon Cowell into the fairy godmother.
What I was most intrigued at is that when I visited CBC, BBC, AP, Google and a whole host of other news outlets, none of them included the natural disasters that traumatized thousands of families: floods, earthquakes, tsunami, food insecurity, hurricanes. Nor did they mention major conflicts: wars in Afghanistan, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen...
As a marketing professional, I am a student of human behaviour -- I take my lead from my audience, not my personal opinion....
Here's to 2009: Celebrate well.....