Social Media on the Rise - Declined

Social media rising to the top or sinking to the bottom when it comes to advertising and marketing.  It seem like we get a different answer depending on who we ask for?.  Some will say that it's on the decline, that people are beginning to realize there's no replacing a real live human.  Others says that's ridiculous and there's no time like the present to jump on the bandwagon..

What you choose??

The Rise
Clearly many aspects of social media on the rise considering the advent of brand new social media platforms every day.  Most of these are very specific platforms, like oneclimate which is platform for not to profit/social change organizations and lovers.  These randomly pop up and vanish all the time.  The enjoy a wide variety of success, depending on how large the niche is they operate within.  There are also major release like Google plus.  Plus is expected to make huge impact on the social media market landscape, taking on giants like Facebook and Twitter.

The Decline
When someone says social media is in decline, they don't mean the actual practice of it.  I've seen it more accurately describes as moving away from calling everything and more towards streamlining social media into the rest of the marketing in one smooth stream.  When business social media first started, people were unware of whether it was going to turn into just another way for companies to shill for their product.  This will caused the current practice to creating social identities for otherwise faceless companies.