SEO Won't be any more dead than health fads (which really started in the late 1800's). As long as Snake Oil exists, people will buy it.
They'll probably take on a different guise now, like calling it "Social Media Promotion" or some other malarkey. Plenty of companies want to be the talk of the town on FB and Twitter.
I think any good social marketers (as they've now rebranded themselves) are fully involved in subverting The Social Web. Any site that reaches a certain size (Digg, Reddit, etc.) will become a ripe target for less than organic posts.
I can give plenty of counter examples, but the one that immediately jumps to mind is orgs like Pissed Consumer, who are essentially using subdomains to hijack other companies' Google juice. However, it's also hard for me to suggest that those links are not relevant to queries if you look for something like "_____ reviews"
Well, there's a negative as well, hence I used keywords like supposedly, apparently etc. But wouldn't you rather your insurance-selling uncle visit you for yourself, instead of an intent to sell you the insurance? I think those days will be here eventually.
Say people eventually buy everything or get some form of advertising kickbacks from "the Social", do you think that there won't be ways to game those income streams?
