One of the panel moderators at Social-Loco cited a term coinage by noted Silicon Valley investor John Doerr that's more useful to understanding what Google is up to than the concept "social" alone: SoLoMo, or social + location + mobile.

As South by Southwest bears down, we're seeing accelerated promotion of products that fuse social, local and mobile media (SoLoMo). This follows the success that Foursquare had at SXSW '09, before quickly expanding to its current 7.5 million users.

This also falls in line with the mobile discovery trend long-espoused in this column. It's now taking on new forms with growing smartphone penetration, and a Groupon-fueled hunger for the deals infused with apps carrying the SoLoMo banner.

I last wrote about Social Local Mobile Search (there's a moutful) in October of last year.