Interesting and amusing post by B.L. Ochman on Self-Proclaimed Social Media Gurus on Twitter Multiplying Like Rabbits which was added to by BroadStuff – TWITTER TO BE NEARLY ENTIRELY COMPOSED OF SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERTS BY 2013.

Since there’s no “generally recognized” certification process and few standards from which to evaluate anyone’s claim to be an expert in this realm, nothing stops anyone from proclaiming themselves an expert or Guru, if they choose to.    Oliver Blanchard (theBrandBuilder) weighted in recently on certifications for Social Media which matches what I feel – while Web Analytics could be certified, Social Media, probably, can’t be, yet, since the field is evolving so quickly.    And there’s the certifying body – who is willing to step up to the plate that can command enough respect?

Anyway, my post isn’t really about that – but since I wrote a post two days ago

on  Using Twitter to find Influentials using TweepSearch, I feel keenly aware that what B.L. said, pulls me in to this discussion (or conversation), weather intentional, or not.

First of all, some of the results in TweepSearch are updated fairly recently, and some are quite old – and that can be sorted as well, once you get the data into Excel, which I cover – though I left out the details since I didn’t want my post to be much longer than it was.

Second of all – having TweepSearch results being somewhat uneven in quality isn’t really the problem it’s made out to be ….. the real problem isn’t TweepSearch – it’s the lack of structured data on the web from which to pull out the meaning of what people are saying and “who they are”.

Perhaps, the only place that makes sense, that is “somewhat” reliable, to pull a description  of what a person does for a living – is from their own “self declared” profile – and while we can’t get it  off of Facebook yet, we can easily get it from Twitter with tools like TweepSearch.

Who cares if the data isn’t 100% fresh – that’s the least of our problem – but yes, it would be nice if all the data was up to date.

I have no argument that there are too many “self proclaimed” experts out there in Social Media – but that’s not really a problem of TweepSearch – it’s a problem of lack of certification for Social Media (which is too early to be effectively done today) and people’s own willingness to proclaim themselves experts.

I see no problem combing and extracting the data out of TweepSearch – which was actually much better and more on target than I could get from any of the Social Media Monitoring Platforms  – which focus on what people are saying, not what they are doing or who they are.

Eventually, this problem will be solved, by the inclusion of Microformats and semantic web, but it will take a few years, at least – I dealt with the issue in my London presentation last month on the Future of Social Media Monitoring (working on a new deck, by the way, which I hope will be ready within a week – on what people are saying about Monitoring Platforms and Vendors).

It’s Google that’s driving Social Media searches way, way, up – see my last post on 400% Rise in Social Media Searches in 2009 Y2Y – what does it mean?

Note: Just want to point out this “hunch” of mine about Google driving Social Media searches and traffic needs a more “deep dive” analysis to confirm.   My “hunch” is, I’m right – and if you look at the entire history of what’s happened this year with Social Media, Google, Bing and Yahoo! have their hands all over it …. especially the latter part of this year  – that confirms my “hunch”.

Still, as a Web Analyst – I feel a responsibility to confirm my hunch with real data beyond what I’ve shown.  Had I access to Comscore – I might have an easier time of it – the real data I need is not that easy to get a hold of …. I suspect, if I had it …. it would more or less, confirm what I believe, which is  … it’s the deals that Twitter and Facebook have done with Google that are driving up Social Media and will continue to accelerate in 2010.

I think it’s about Google and Real Time Search – the inclusion of updates from Twitter and Facebook are the main drivers – but the overall direction is for a full integration between Search Engines and Social Media next year.

Very interesting recap of developments in Social Media this year from WebProNews which tie into the 400% increase in searches and activity on Social Media in the second half of 2009.

Google’s  inclusion of real time data from Twitter and now Facebook – is beginning to deliver the “promised land” and  made Social Media the “mecca” the “goldmine” that it is … it’s Google, as I predicted long ago – would bring Social Media, via Search, into it’s own – it’s Google and the Search Engines that will make 2010 the year of Social Media ROI and the beginning of the Convergence.

While the buildup has been gradual, according th the Google Insights for Search chart – the real action started happening in July 09 and has been building up momentum ever since.

Here’s what happened according to WebProNews – What’s Happened in Social Media Over the Year and I’ll bold the parts I think are the most significant.

July

In July, Google launched its Facebook page, MySpace launched its email service, and LinkedIn introduced custom profiles for companies. YouTube launched its 3D experiment, doubled the size limit of uploads, and gave users the ability to share YouTube Insights stats.

A Twitter documentary was announced, and Twitter itself gave businesses a new resource and started making hashtags link. Facebook addressed privacy and photo use for ads, gave businesses a way to increase their Facebook fans, and added the ability to create events from the publisher.

August

In August, Facebook was readying a new ads manager, made subtle changes to its design, announced plans for privacy improvement, started integrating directly with Twitter, launched its own real-time search, implemented restrictions on sponsored status updates, updated open stream APIs, acquired FriendFeed, and began letting developers sell physical merchandise for virtual currency.

Twitter quietly took a step toward security, and announced plans to launch a feature that makes the service location-aware. Izea launched “Sponsored Tweets,” and Tweetmeme brought analytics to retweeting.

Google reader got more social features, YouTube placed more emphasis on search and launched its own AdSense-like promoted videos. Delicious showed off new features forsharing, search, and its homepage. StumbleUpon made some big changes to its toolbar.

September

In September, Google turned the whole web into an exclusive social network with SideWiki. Yahoo launched a new contacts API, Yahoo profiles became social media profiles, and the company launched the Twitter-like Yahoo Meme in English. Microsoft added MySpace activity updates to Windows Live, and Bing announced it was readying sharing features for search results.

A sick poll was discovered on and removed from Facebook, and Facebook announced its translation plans, and that it had roughly the same amount of people as the entire U.S. population. Facebook also added tagging from status updates, and launched Facebook Lite in the U.S. and India.

MySpace Music launched in Australia, and Myspace users started being able to sync updates with Twitter. LinkedIn made profile organization easier, a record label was launched for YouTube stars, and YouTube began readying a friend-finder feature.

Pizza Hut and other brands used Twitter to help feed the hungry, Digg made changes to its nofollow policy, the Washington Post’s leaked social media policy faced criticism, and real-time search engines Collecta and OneRiot launched APIs.

October

In October, Bing scored deals with Twitter and Facebook, while Google scored one with Twitter. Mozilla shared its plans for integrating social media and email into one inbox, and Twitter partnered with its first charity. LinkedIn announced that it surpassed 50 million users.

MySpace introduced new music features, StumbleUpon launched a new design with more of a search focus, YouTube got real-time search for comments, and the only known video footage of Anne Frank appeared on YouTube.

Facebook confirmed testing of a new design, made share buttons more useful, gave groups walls, tried harder to get page owners to verify, and presented new obstacles for application developers. They also launched the Create Application API.

November

In November, Google eased the retrieval of SideWiki entries for entire sites, Google Wave got a feature for following, and Google launched some new features for Google Friend Connect.

Facebook tested new design changes, and continued work on privacy changes. Facebook and Twitter both made their way into dictionaries and onto video game consoles.  Twitter made geotagging tweets possible, and talked about plans which would make its suggested usres list more like Twellow’s. Twitter also changed launched Twitter Lists, gave apps access to people search, rolled out the controversial retweet feature, and changed “What are you doing?” to“What’s Happening?”.

LinkedIn opened up its platform to developers, Yahoo began showing tweets for news results, MySpace launched new music charts, Salesforce announced its “Facebook for the enterprise,” YouTube connected news outlets with citizen reporters, PayPal launched new APIs to take over mobile and social apps, Microsoft launched a big redesign of MSN, Opera launched Opera Unite, Digg launched Digg Trends.

December

In December, Google, Facebook, and YouTube all got new URL shorteners. Twitter continued expansion into new languages, and announced plans for business features. Google launched real-time search in the search results.

LinkedIn began testing a new design, and launched faceted search, Facebook began giving translators awards, adjusted privacy controls, and formed a board for online safety, MySpace launched new APIs, upgraded users’ mobile experience, and acquired iMeem, Bing launchednew maps with apps, and Yahoo deepened its integration with Facebook. Digg released a new version of its API. Also, the new FTC guidelines went into effect.

It’s mostly Google – Google has been merging the Social Web with Organic Search and now….

Compete.com Destination Traffic from Google.com, November 09

…. Social Media goes mainstream in 2010 – it’s said to be the year of Social Media ROI, so many say ….. I think if we’re not there by years end 2010, we’ll be much closer to it  – you can see the acceleration.

I’m developing a deck around this – but felt I didn’t want to wait to share the news – and perhaps, get insight from my readers that I can use  (I don’t get the whole picture – but I don’t know anyone who does – but, maybe, together – we can make sense of all of this).

I recently talked with Stephen Debruyn recently about his list of social media monitoring vendors – DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING/CORPORATE REPUTATION MEASUREMENT FIRMS and felt I might use the guide  as a jumping off point to how Social Media Monitoring grew in 2009 and I’m working on a PowerPoint Presentation, now.

Note: in the post following this one – I put out a theory that Google is the main driver of this increase – which makes sense to me since Google is the driver of so much Web 2.0 Traffic – see 400% Rise in Social Media Traffic due to Search Engines – Google for more information and the next piece of this puzzle.

Used Alterian/Techrigy/SM2 platform to monitor what was being said about each brand in Debruyn’s guide with additional queries for “social media monitoring” and “social media buzz”, etc.

I noticed a curious thing – since this summer the volume of conversations about Social Media (focusing on monitoring Social Media) increased 400% from what it was at the beginning of this year, and for all of 2008.

I questioned the accuracy of the data I collected from Alterian, as I this profile took up most of  my 200,000 searches limit and wondered if it didn’t actually complete – and that’s what I was seeing.

Used Google Insights for Search and found, more or less, a similar pattern of “Social Media” searches increasing by 400% this year – and compared it to SEO, SEM searches, which haven’t changed.

That gets me to the reason I am writing this post – not so much to find out about the 400% increase, as interesting as it is, as to see which of the social media monitoring firms, which make a living monitoring the web, are generating buzz around their own brands, and highlights of what what was being said about them.

More later, as I complete this study and try to figure out what it all means.