Participants will include Eric Bryant, of MyRECoach.com, Tyler Hurst of TDHurst.com, Jay Thompson of PhoenixREGuy.com, and yours truly.

It should make for some interesting discussion. To further the drama, I am sticking to my guns as a proponent of why we SHOULDN’T be spending our time trying to guess what Web 3.0 is/will be.

I am ready to rumble.

Example#1- If I Google “Comcast”, a quick scan of the first page of results causes my brain to process the following info: Comcast’s website is www.comcast.com, there are several Comcast locations in my area, Wikipedia has a Comcast article, and I can view a video of a Comcast technician sleeping on a couch on YouTube.

Example #2- If I search “Comcast” on the Twitter feed, a whole different set of information is revealed to me: someone’s Comcast bill is $150 and they think it is absurd, more than three people hate Comcast “with a passion”, Comcast is offering free premium shows online, and it took Comcast 22 days to install Evan’s cable, but only three days to respond to this blog article.

Spot the difference? Google has built a kingdom around their ever evolving search algorithm. In order for any one webpage to rise to the coveted #1 position, certain criteria must be met, and a plethora of factors can affect its overall score. How long has the website been around? How long is the domain registered for? How many external links point to this site? What is its traffic? How reliable is the content? How rich is the content? You get the pictures.

Google has perfected the science of crawling, organizing, and outputting information. Crawling, organizing, and rendering- however fast it may be- still takes time. Someone texted me earlier today to ask if Kanye West was dead. My first response was to ask google for confirmation, where no mention of the egomaniac’s passing could be found. Second stop? Twitter. It was flooded with news of Kanye’s death. For a very brief moment in time, tens of thousands of people were talking about Kanye West’s alleged death.

And Google had no idea. (Searching “Kanye West” on Google now yields results about a Twitter hoax)

More and more people are placing an increased value on real-time search. Enter Bing.

Bing’s search engine market share has quickly grown to over 10%. It launched in June with 0% market share… It is a rapidly growing beast.

Despite it’s sometimes gimmicky strategies (You mean I can really get $1.50 back for purchasing a $250 cardigan from J Crew? Sweeeeet….), Bing has made some fairly strategic moves to position themselves as the number one search engine by 2015. What sticks out the most, though, is its proactive decision to partner with Facebook and Twitter. Bing will now license data streams (Hellloooooo Revenue!) from Twitter. And remember that $240 Million investment from Uncle Microsoft to Facebook two years ago? It’s all coming to a head now.

Perhaps Google will always rule mainstream search. It is an ever changing encyclopedia of information whose heart has a slow, resounding rhythm.

The NY Times could tell how popular Superbowl Commercials were via Twitter,  Pizza Hut and Comcast qualm  would-be cyber revolutions before they begin, and companies monitor the general public’s sentiment on a day-to-day basis. Real time search is here to stay, and it is growing at the pace of a TMNT. It’s life blood is circulated by a frantic, fickle, mass of millions who move at the speed of light and can change the tide of information in a frenzied heartbeat.

And Microsoft has that pulsating heartbeat in the palm of its hand.

***UPDATE****
About 5 minutes after I published this, I went to Tech Crunch’s site to see what was new. This is what was new.

The advent of Social Media, alongside its subsequent utility in the professional arena, has  been the topic of much conversation over the last 18 months. As a matter of fact, no Real Estate conference this side of Mars hasn’t had a panel discussion or outright speaker’s session on how agents can use Social Media to their advantage.

Somewhere between 18 months ago and today, I began to feel a lurid anticipation towards these types of events. From locally organized get-togethers to those held on the national (and international level), there wasn’t a program to be found that didn’t have at least 45 minutes dedicated to the topic of, you guessed it: Social Media.

As my eyes scanned any given agenda, I would become excited at what I might learn that day… “New Websites That Provide Powerful Tools for Your Company and Agents” at 10:00 AM. “Latest Technology Created Specifically for the Real Estate Industry” at 12:30 PM, “NYU Economist Predicts How Long We Will Face Recession” at 3:00 PM. “Networking Hour. Open Bar.” at 6:30 PM. All of these things flooded me with a certain expectation that promised to fulfill the itch for knowledge I had woken up with that very morning.

Then, out of nowhere, my darting eyes would abruptly stop. The momentum that was picking up in my brain would smack into a solid brick wall that was built around the pillars of Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin. Without fail, a bead of sweat would slowly roll down into the corner of my eye as I looked about aimlessly, confused and afraid. Will this be the one? I’d ask myself. Will this be the one where I learn something? Will this be the one that is somehow different than all of the other ones?

The answer, as we all know by now, is a very resounding “No”. You know it, I know it, we all know it. The only thing new about the Social Media panels we’ve been attending for the last 18 months are the Social Media Gurus who have been speaking at them. They tell us things we already know, and we go back to our Company and tell our agents a lot of the same things that they already know.

It’s time to make a stand. I’m a Social Media Guru, and there’s a very large possibility that you are, too. So as Gurus, it’s time to step up to the plate and change the game a little bit. After all, if we say the same thing for another 18 months, my Luddite friend from college will cash in on becoming a Social Media Guru, too. Kind of like how he waited in line to get his Real Estate License back in ’05.

So, we’ve all been to the SocMed101 class. Some of us have taught it (time and time again). And, undoubtedly, SocMed101 still has its place. But it’s time to start enrolling people in SocMed102. How? It’s simple, and here is the course outline:

• Bebo, Hi5, and QZone: why it’s time to know what these are, too
• Social Media Aggregates and Apps (plaxo, ping.fm, tweetdeck, seesmic, etc.)
• Strategic Social Media Content Placement (understanding the fundamentals of Passive vs. Active Marketing)
• Social News and Bookmarking- how it’s shaping what you know (Mixx, Digg, Reddit, Delicious, etc.)
• Targeted Ad Marketing on Facebook (why hasn’t anyone talked about this yet??)
• Controlling Your Google Page 1
• Blogging (ok, so we’re starting to skim the surface with this one, but not effectively)
• Peer-review sites (yelp, epinion, etc.)

These are just a few of the things one could discuss, and there are plenty more. The samples above, by themselves, are more than enough to fill 45 minutes of discussion.

(cue pipe organ) And so, my fellow colleagues, tech enthusiasts, brokers, managers, and gurus: the time is upon us to TEACH the people what they need to know! Long are the days that face us when we have to toil over our spiral notebooks, coming up with new ideas and content to present at our next social media panel, but short be the nights that are filled with people who don’t already know the same things we’ve been talking about for almost two years! I say to you now: you shall rue the day that a fellow guru comes up with new and exciting topics of discussion as it relates to social media before you! I say to you now: the time has come to educate and empower our agents with newer, better, and bigger tools and ideas! I SAY TO YOU NOW: go forth and renew the people’s interest in social media so that we may once again shine in the eyes of our peers as what we were always meant to be… SOCIAL MEDIA GURUS!!!!

<ahem> I may have gotten a little carried away there (the soapbox in my head was made of pearl encrusted gold, in case you were wondering), but I think you get the point. One of two things is going to happen the next time you get up to speak about social media:

1. 2 people are going to take notes, and everyone else is going to say I already know this in their heads (there’s a look people give now that says that exact thing to someone else from across the room… I’ve become an expert at interpreting it)
2. They are going to take notes and right down all of these things that they’ve never heard of at a social media panel and try at least one of them when they get home. They might work, they might not.

I’d rather be known for the guy who talked about new potential ways to enhance our career via social media than the guy who said the same thing the last 50 guys did…. wouldn’t you?