A few years ago Rohit Bhargava started a meme about Social Media Optimization. He described it as:

The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.

While it inspired dozens and dozens of trackback stories, including a write up by the high-profile SEO guru Danny Sulllivan; the meme essentially died. It died because the practice wasn’t based on reverse engineering an algorithm. It was fuzzy concepts on social engineering to behave in such a way as to attract links. Social link baiting, if you will.

Flash forward to present day and Bing announces Twitter search capabilities. Shortly after the news spikes, Google says “Me too!” But, then a quiet trump card emerges when Google softly announces a more comprehensive search effort for all of social media.

Ah, now there’s an algorithm! And it’s search. Assuming Google’s search experiment pans out, we’ll see a new generation of algo crackers building up the best practices for Social Search Optimization. One major difference between SEO and SSO will be the social ecosystem that the content lives in. It will be interesting to see the reaction to the SSO practices, especially the critiques.