With social networking sites surpassing search engines in terms of popularity, will the marketing value of search engine optimization diminish over time? This article makes a great case that the usefulness of organic search for consumers may eventually wane.

Interesting question: when a social network community provides answers–as opposed to an algorithm–can anyone really “optimize” their website for social networks? In fact, in this context, one can argue that the concept of “optimization” is a legacy marketing principle more akin to “push” marketing concepts as opposed to “engagement” or “Web 2.0″ marketing concepts.

Let’s consider this phrase “semantic social network”. Via Google, I get this result, and via Wikia Search I get this result; as of this post, I am awaiting help from my FaceBook community.

Obviously, Google and Wikia will return a faster result than the community, and arguably the time I am waiting for the community to respond to my request (if it responds) I can peruse the myriad results via the two search engines. What I am hoping for, though, is that the community will point me in a direction that’s more pointed and vetted via its collective consciousness.