For years, those in the know have been pointing to the end of email.  Social Media, they say, is moving the archaic technology aside for what is surely to be the new communication tool of choice.  But email continues to unceremoniously chug along as one of the most effective mediums available to marketers.

Now comes the call of Social Media as the new SEO.  And while I am hesitant to accept the notion, or think anyone is actually suggesting that SEO “goes away,” there is something more to this than simply rhetoric.

If you look at the evolution of technology, and I’m speaking more to the effect of market forces on the development of new applications, then something is happening that might in fact be of interest.  Social Media has created an entirely new frontier.  And if you are not prepared to accept Twitter or Facebook as more than the realm of idol teenage hands, then look at what is happening in search.

Google, and in truth just about everyone, are announcing real-time search that returns results from Social Media content sites such as Twitter.  Many like Google, have direct relationships with Twitter or Facebook, and are using those relationships to develop feeds and push relevant content to the results page.  How much of an effect this has on getting those results to you, according to Google, is that they have reduced the time from effectively being able to show a result from 15 minutes to seconds after the post.

For business, Social Media now has meaning beyond just simple statements of interest to your followers.  If companies like Google are going to start paying attention to what you are saying, and indeed, develop an entire strategy around finding and displaying your content, then what impact does Social Media have on the business landscape?  How does posting  Tweets match efforts in SEO to getting noticed?

In the case of Twitter, if your followers have followers, your content has in effect been recommended by others. So, like page rank, Google is interested in reputation.  But, according to Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow and the leader on real-time search, this is much more than a popularity contest.  There are other factors, of course, in determining which message rises over the noise.  Tag clouds and instances of keywords within proximity are also important.  If “Capital” is shown in close proximity to “Markets” and “Investments,” then Google may be more likely to return this result on a search for start up funding.

But be careful with those hashtags, because density might in fact be a negative.  Which is where the rules for getting attention diverge for the two platforms.  Google does have an approach to addressing the use of hashtags in the algorithm.  In other words, mashing popular terms into a tweet and using the (#) for every word, just might be flagged as negative.  Therefore, instead of using keyword density to your benefit, something like this might be considered spam: @OfferStrategy is the #entrepreneur of #choice for #business #investment in #startup and #vc #funding  http://bit.ly/Re83x.

So, is SEO going away?  Not by a long stretch.  But it does signal a strategy change on the horizon, or the need to adapt to new market forces.  You could even suggest that social media is a mutation on the internet gene and has forever altered search.  What’s not open for discussion is that Social Media is real and important and absolutely necessary to any business strategy.