When will we see the role of Social Media specialist disappear and become a skill of a Marketing person rather than it's own independent position?

Saying when it will happen is a tough call, but I think the question actually doesn't go broad enough. Ultimately, Social Media specialist is like say "fax specialist" or "email specialist." Ridiculous, right? The evolution will not be Social Media> Marketing. It will be Social Media to Every Employee in the company. What the social media revolution brings us is the ability/opportunity for every person in the company to be a brand ambassador or spokesperson. The Forrester guys wrote a book called "Empowered" about this trend. More recently, we had a case study written up in the Smart Brief on Social Media about a program we did with Global 360 called "Make Everyone A Marketer" (see here: http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2011/01/14/your-hidden-and-cost-effective-marketing-assets/) I think this is the trend. Social Media is bigger than marketing. It touches every corner of the organization, no matter how big or small.

Social Media Specialists won't ever completely disappear.  I think many social media positions will, however, start to be integrated into more general positions in the marketing department. The key for any company is that your social media strategy doesn't fall outside your overall brand messaging.  Some companies (Nike, Coca-Cola, Gatorade, just as examples) create enough social media chatter that they'll always require staff dedicated solely to social media efforts.  But it's important that those people work under marketing directors to ensure that social strategy supports other messaging and vice-versa. For companies that aren't going to generate the social media activity that a major consumer brand will, it's more efficient to hire a marketing director that understands social media and can keep strategies and tactics consistent across mediums than to keep such a specified position on the books.

I'm with Jenny on this. Honestly, I know a lot of marketers that say they are social media experts. The ability to post on a Twitter account does not a social media expert make. You have to understand the space as a whole, know how to integrate across company verticals, etc. Hopefully, as companies see other companies (like Dell) that have a dedicated social media staff (and that they're making beaucoup $$ doing it) they'll realize that they'll need to have marketing professionals and social media professionals - working together of course.