Is the Era of Social Media in Government About to Begin?

At our technology site, Nextgov, Emily Long reports on an analysis by Justin Kirstner of Webtrends that concludes we're well in the Era of Social Media on the web. (It follows on the first two eras: New Media and Web 2.0.)

In fact, Kirstner argues, we're so far into the social media era that its end is on the horizon. "Assuming that social media has a similar hype cycle to Web 2.0, it should peak around the beginning of 2012 with the next phase of the web taking over around 2015," he writes.

Given trends in the previous eras, I'll ask -- not entirely facetiously -- does this mean that the era of social media in government is about to begin? If public officials are beginning to do things like tweet notices of executions, then maybe the answer is yes.