A recent article found in Advertising Age titled ‘Friendsoucing’: Search Gone Social explains why marketers today should care about social network users’ friends’ interests.

The article explains how in its purest state, Google’s page rank algorithm serves up the ideal result for everyone, but it is the same ideal result for everyone. How does Google know which articles are right for each individual searcher?

But we may be on the edge of something big in the search world.

Throughout the past year there was a flurry of activity from the major search engines. Bing announced deals with Facebook and Twitter. Next Google unveiled its social search product. Google has also begun integrating real-time, public conversations with hot, trending keyword searches. Marketers have only started to scratch the surface of what these partnerships mean for them and their clients. At the very leas, there are three paradigm shifts to deal with in the future:

• What brands say and do in social media has an increasingly direct effect on how they will appear in the search engines.

• The more friends in a user’s social circle that talk about a brand, the more likely it is that another user will see your brand and become another voice.

• Social media is not just a silo in the marketing mix anymore and the lines will become more increasingly blurred with mass media, CRM, SEO/SEM and other marketing channels.

It is never too late for marketers to launch a social media campaign for their brand. Social media is not just an Internet fad that will disappear as the years pass. It has changed the way marketers promote their brand and reach their audiences. Although social media may evolve throughout the years, it is a marketing channel that is here to stay.