Well, here it is two days later and I am just getting around to reading this thread. Like several of the others who have posted, I have been a "member" for three or four years and have posted just over 40 times. In fact, it has been months since I last posted.

That said, time is such a valuable and limited commodity. When participating in social media started to be discussed here, I said, basically, "Oh no. I don't have enough time as it is." That hasn't changed but I have tried. As for kgun's second set of questions, search engines have long had a problem with relevancy. It happens often enough that the most relevant site to my inquiry is on page 2 or 3 of the search results. From my strictly empirical evidence, SMO has neither improved nor worsened the issue of relevancy. Are the rankings deserved? IMO, SMO is no less deserving than any other factor in a site's rankings.

Thanks for starting the conversation, kgun.