I propose a game. Predict which of the following Web 2.0 sites will be out of business one year from now, on November 12, 2009:

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Pandora
4. LinkedIn
5. Flickr (owned by Yahoo)
6. YouTube (owned by Google)
7. MySpace (owned by NewsCorp)
8. Hulu (owned NewsCorp/NBC Universal)

I picked these eight sites in part because they are all smart, successful, dynamic sites that most of us are pulling for. What concerns me is that they basically follow the same business plan: Let’s build something really cool, give it away for free, and figure out how to make money off it later. Difficulty: Recession. Later is sooner than we thought.

Consider how you would feel if you fired up your computer one day and found that one of these sites – say, Flickr or Facebook – had closed, and the data you shared with them was inaccessible and about to be erased. I got to thinking about this because of a story I wrote at work yesterday about a technology provider for photographers that suddenly shut down.

I sure don’t wish anyone out of a job, but realistically, I think some things are about to start crashing back down to Earth. My predictions are in the comments.

When the going gets tough, accuse somebody of not knowing Africa is a continent!

Related: All previous posts about Sarah Palin.

I am scared. Amid all the media layoffs we’ve seen this quarter, the two most troubling ones happened in the last week: Radar magazine folded and sold its Web domain to AMI (to be re-branded as a celebrity site), and Portfolio scaled back and basically gutted its Web staff.

Why do I single out these two smallish, New York-centric publications? Because Radar and Portfolio had kick-ass Web sites. Good writers, smart design, lots of breaking exclusives, and a trustworthy reputation that led other sites to link to them and drive in quality traffic. They did everything right. And from what I understand, they drew big numbers from demographics that ought to have appealed to advertisers. The fact that neither Radar Online nor Porfolio.com was sustainable totally crushes the idea that media companies can succeed by publishing content for free online.

But online journalism makes so much sense! It’s cheap and easy to do! There’s an obvious, and growing, demand for it! And even if it loses money now, online advertising will save us! It just needs a couple of years to catch up.

That was my die-hard belief until I read a very persuasive post by Henry Boldget on Silicon Alley Insider: Let’s Be Serious: Online Display Ads Will Fall Sharply In 2009.

I have been chewing on that idea over the last few days as I’ve watched one publisher after another slash their editorial staffs. While print staffs are getting hit hardest, online staffs are not protected by some halo of future projections. They’re getting axed, too.

What if everything we think we know about online advertising is wrong? What if we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking that just because something is fun and useful, it also must be a good business? What if this is as good as it gets?

Happy Halloween!

Christopher Beam writing in Slate:

“Most Internet memes have the lifespan of fruit flies. But there’s evidence to suggest fail is here to stay. For one thing, it’s easier to say than failure.”

See also: The Onion: Failure Now An Option.

Things would be swell, but for those liberal reporters and their “gotcha!” questions!

As a reminder, Sarah Palin has a degree in journalism from the University of Idaho. The more of these clips we see, the more I sense my degree in journalism depreciating.

“I used to live next door to a Russian émigré. One day he asked me to explain something that puzzled him about his new country. ‘This place seems very rich,’ he said, ‘but I never see anyone making anything. How does the country earn its money?’ The answer, these days, is that we make a living by selling each other houses.”

- Paul Krugman in The New York Times, August 12, 2005.

Regarding the Metrolink crash near Los Angeles….

A grisly accident like this is an unfortunate blow to public transportation. It cost at least 25 lives, according to news reports, and will scare some riders away from trains. It should be a wake-up call that the West Coast badly needs to upgrade its passenger rail infrastructure.

The crash in California is being blamed on human error: An engineer failed to stop for a red signal. But this kind of wreck could only have occurred because of California’s clunky, obsolete train system. On this route, two trains in opposite directions were routinely running on the same stretch of track. Why the singletracking? Because a tunnel, dating to the early 1900s, was never made wide enough for two trains. Obviously it is possible to operate a railroad safely with this limitation. But it means slower trains and a greater risk of catastrophe due to human error.

In a first-class rail system – like the electrified passenger trains in most of Europe, or the Northeast Corridor in the U.S. – trains in opposite directions can be segregated to separate tracks. These modern rail lines are also engineered to avoid grade crossings, passing above or below the cars on the street. Some also have technologies to stop a train even if an engineer fails to heed a signal. But in the rest of the U.S., passenger trains have been on life support since the 1950s. Most passenger lines (including the Metrolink commuter trains) have to share track with freight trains and to contend with grade crossings. California, despite its good environmental record, is still a state totally ruled by the automobile. It deserves a substantial investment in improving its trains.

I am sure the terrorists didn’t realize they were attacking New York at a time when city and state bureaucracy was completely logjammed. In retrospect, The Port Authority should have immediately dug out the blueprints from the 1970s and started putting the towers back where they stood. They could be up by now, symbols of hope and defiance. But what really happened? A developer produced drawings of buildings even more boring than the World Trade Center, and sat on the land for seven years while a tangle of quasi-government authorities churned out delays and excuses.

If you haven’t seen Ground Zero and are curious about what the site looks like now, I recommend the photos shot by my friend Mark Lennihan, who has been covering the redevelopment for the AP. You can see some of his aerials this week on The Big Picture (check out photos 9-12, 16 and 17).

The great thing about trains is they never get lost. Or run out of gas. Oh wait.