To simply answer your question, yes it does. Can it also be useless? Yes. Is there something else you are specifically asking?
The only benefit of facebook and twitter is it provides traffic to your site, i don't think so if it is effective for making backlink.
FB links has their value in Bing. Yes, if your friends in FB have liked the particular link, it will be in the top of the Bing SERP if you logged in your FB account.
Of course it works on SEO and other Search Engines. It will improve your page rank and generate traffic so keep building it.
it may not help in page rank but will definately help in positions... i think we need to give more preferances to this social stuff in particular since google is plannin to buy Cirlces and they already have said that they take facebook and twitter links in consideration when giving positions...
Yes, as we see that sometime we use google search result will link us to facebook . Beside that everyone said that SEO is dead , then is time to target keywords in facebook search. I believe that social network link is a dofollow link .
If you go in your google webmaster tools account, the facebook links show up. I am not sure what this means but I hope it counts for something?? H
According to SEOMOZ, Google and Bing Confirm that Twitter/Facebook Influence SEO - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-bing-confirm-twitter-facebook-influence-seo
Facebook and twitter links are important only from getting traffic. Yes it is also helpful in indexing our site.
yes they are important for social traffic, even this link is nofollow (i think) they can bring traffic and it's the most important for a website.