2009 has been quite a year of highs and lows. Today, let’s have a look at just a few of the lows.

Many celebrities had their lives hashed out in the media and at the water cooler. Perceptions of Chris Brown started the year on a high but quickly fell after accusations of a physical altercation with his girlfriend. Perceptions of him improved very slowly over the year but still have not reached pre-incident levels. Jon Gosselin, of Jon and Kate fame, also started on a high and barely even registered online until May of 2009. At that point, people’s perceptions of him plummeted when it was reported he may have had an affair. Perceptions of Jon have continued to drop since that time. Kanye West experienced his drop in sentiment after some rude behavior at the VMA awards. But, he has since made a moderate recovery. The newest unfortunate scandal of the year belongs to Tiger Woods whose seemingly never ending incidents have not permitted perceptions of him to level off nor improve.

Based purely on perceptions, the social media world has created a scandal hierarchy ranging from being rude, to having an affair, to causing injury, to the ultimate low of having an affair when children are visibly involved. Recovery from such scandals can take months or years during which time ticket sales, CD sales, and  endorsement opportunities are negatively affected. These incidents have caused a number of companies to re-think who they feel best reflects their products and to cancel or not renew celebrity relationships.

It’s been quite a year of lows. Let’s cheer things up a bit in our next blog, as we celebrate some of the highs of 2009.

Well, not literally, but Tiger Woods did crash his car and he is getting burned! But what do real folks think of the whole situation? The volume of tweets related to Tiger had been relatively low prior to November 27 at which time it registered a 9000% increase. Even now, several days later, the spike remains, though only about 4000% higher. If that’s not statistically significant, we don’t know what is!

Sentiment showed a similar significant change as a result of the incident. Sentiment was hovering around 100% positive until November 27 at which point it suddenly dropped when people learned about the accident and became concerned for his well-being. Now, instead of nearly 100% approval, Tiger is dealing with an approval rating of about 60%. And that’s a big drop for someone whose income depends on consumer approval.

But as we all know now, it wasn’t simply his well-being that peaked our interest and kept us going. On day 1 after the incident, 92% of the chatter was focused on the car crash or accident. This quickly transitioned, however, such that by day 4, just 43% of tweets were about the car crash and 57% were about a supposed extramarital affair, perhaps the transgression that Tiger today announced he was regretful for. One can only wonder how will this impact his marketability.

The lighter side of this whole incident though, is that the drama brought us a fantastic set of new jokes. Here are just a few of our favorites. Enjoy!

• Police say Tiger Woods injuries are not serious, however he is feeling a little under par

• Maybe Tiger Woods should change his name to ‘Cheetah’ Woods

• What’s the difference between a Titleist and a Cadillac?? Tiger Woods can drive a Titleist 400 yards without hitting a tree

• What’s the difference between a car and a golf ball? Tiger Woods can drive a ball 400 yards.

• Tiger Woods is so rich that he owns lots of expensive cars. Now he has a hole in one.

• Hollywood is making a film based on this incident: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Hydrant