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Peter Kim has compiled a great e-book of social media predictions for 2009 with inputs from fourteen social media thought leaders: David Armano, Rohit Bhargava, Pete Brackshaw, Chris Brogan, Todd Defren, Jason Falls, Joseph Jaffe, Charlene Li, Scott Monty, Ann Handley, Jeremiah Owyang, Ben McConnell, Andy Sernovitz and Greg Verdino.

Here are the top five themes that emerge from these predictions –

1. Corporates will learn how to use social media for customer service.
2. Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect will lead to a more social web and lay down the foundation for social shopping.
3. Social media users will trim their profiles and networks and even opt for exclusive social networks.
4. Location aware mobile social networks will become established and brands will finally crack the mobile marketing code.
5. In spite of disappointment with the Obama government 2.0 initiatives, we will see an increase in social media activism and philanthropy.

Here are my own top seven social media predictions for India for 2009.

Today I was reminded that much of what we do on social media is hustle. On our blogs, we hustle our readers. On our social networks, we hustle our Friends. Sometimes, when we are really desperate, we even resort to emails or text messages to hustle our real friends. We hustle them to read our posts, listen to our podcasts, watch our videos, join our groups, subscribe to our RSS feeds, retweet our tweets, link to our websites, promote our causes, sign our petitions, vote on our contest entries, buy our books, and donate to our favorite charities.

For instance, today, in three successive posts, I hustled friends, readers and strangers to join the Voices Against Terror Facebook cause, vote for MobiChange at the NetSquared USAID Development 2.0 Challenge, and buy my collaborative book ‘The Age of Conversation 2.0: Why Don’t People Get It?’. Then, I followed up my blog posts with even more hustling on Twitter and Facebook, and, eventually, on email and in person.

The thing is: I hate to hustle and social media is all about the hustle.

It seems that I’m not the only one toying with the idea of using social media for social change. Here is SM4SC or, literally, Social Media for Social Change (via Chris Brogan) —

The social media world has proven that, though still a young and small community within a multitude of industries, we have the power to exact great change. But what about change for the greater good? Social Media for Social Change was born of the idea that the social media community, these “agents of change” can get together for one night, to support one cause.

The first SM4SC event will take place on October 10 at Boston (Eventbrite) to raise funds to benefit Jane Doe Inc. , a Boston-based anti-domestic violence organization.

You can follow SM4SC on Twitter/ MySpace/ Facebook/ LiveJournal/ Flickr or on their blog.

I like the idea of SM4SC but I’m wondering if it will scale.

What do you think? How would you use social media for social change?