Google confirms social network data plays role in search ranking...

If we look at Google's history we can find out how
they will likely weight social mentions.

They like popularity, authority, and relevance right?

So if you are a tech blogger and Mike Arrington tweets
out a link to your site, chances are that's going to have
a lot more weight than @JohnnyLovesDoggies tweeting
about your blog.

I believe activity (social mentions, subscriber counts,
and on-site evidence) will eventually out-weight backlinks.
Especially when backlinks are being SOOO HEAVILY
manipulated now.

Isn't that what happened to meta tags and alt tags?

Once over-optimization hits they find a new way to
rank you. This is their new way and it WILL have a lot
of weight soon as they realize how well it works.

You can more reliably tell the popularity of a website by the
amount of authoritative tweets/shares/subscriber velocity
than by the amount of backlinks it gets.

It can be gamed though just like backlinks, and it will be,
but then they'll find another way... and the cycle continues

Nice! That's a pretty good strategy.... going to be trying it later this week.