One Goes Down Other Goes Up

OM Malik wrote today about the alerts we see around us for the falling economy.
I agree with him. All signs show that we are heading into some tough time, where advertising budgets will be cut and a lot of web sites will be hurt.

But like any situation, when someone is down someone else is going up.
While it's obvious which business will be hurt the most, what more interesting to think of is which businesses will actually be better from this bad economy.
A simple math shows you that when fuel prices and housing costs are up, people cut on their spending, hurting offline and online retailers. But people will cut their spending on other things to.
People will buy less books, will go less to movies, will rent less DVD, buy less music, cancel newspaper subscriptions, etc. What won't go down is the amount of time people have to spend on entertainment. So if you are doing less of the above, something need to replace it.
Will we see people read more blogs instead of newspapers?
Will we see people watch more free online video instead of movies and DVD?
Will we see people listen more to free music services instead of buying music?
Will we see people spend more time on social networks, trying to find new ways to entertain themselves and pass the time?

If all those things will happen, maybe in the end the downturn in the economy will actually be a good thing for the web. Yes, on the short term, business will get hurt as cache flow will be a problem. But if the recession won't be a very long one, the businesses that will survive it will have stronger, more loyal and even new audiences to monetize later on.

What do you think?