Sgt_Kickaxe - 2:00 am on Dec 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

Personally I'm more willing to interact when a site is busy so I'd have to say the authority signals work best on your site but then there are those who never leave their social networks so perhaps both are needed?

That brings me back to my starting point however, are those types of signals needed or are backlinks still superior in terms of actual rankings for your site? Is the gap closing?

I used to think that social networks would come and go but rankings would stay the same. We seem to be seeing all sorts of signals that suggest its rankings that will go and social will take over, every search company has a social network for example, but I'm just not seeing it, yet.