Back then, I owned an early-stage interactive agency. When I’d go visit prospective clients I’d say “you don’t need an internet guru. What you need is someone who will learn enough about your business to help you understand what levers to push online to help move the needle.”

A big problem then, as now, is that many gurus have deep experience with the tools but scant experience in business.

Evangelism is exciting, but many gurus would be well-advised to make sure they’re listening at least twice as much as they are Twittering

It looks as if Social Media experts, gurus, whatever you want to call them, are victims of their own success. They have been able to influence many organizations and individuals to adopt social media tools and practices.

However, too many of these “experts” are now whining. This is what happens as technologies spread – more people gain knowledge.

Yes, there are people who will call themselves experts with little real experience in social networking, but they actually may be equipped sufficiently to help the even less savvy learn themselves. Like in any profession, there is a hierarchy of skill and the market will help define their compensation. You already see this in other “leading” marketing activities like SEO/SEM.

Also, you don’t have to look back that far to see when “stupider” people overtook “smarter” people. During the first Internet wave, the Internet Protocol savvy people wailed and gnashed their teeth as the less savvy telco people came up to speed with knowledge of how to connect to the Internet. Before you knew it, the telcos were swallowing up the “pure ISPs” without even knowing how the protocol works.

Get used to it. And don’t think of this as a backlash. This is just the period where the market is becoming saturated and the true experts have to actually work harder to get clients. And once again, some people with less social media credentials will be able to outmaneuver the “real” social media experts simply because they are better overall marketers. Think about it.