Since the last time we gave an update at the beginning of the month there have been 20,171 layoffs at tech and media companies added to our Layoff Tracker. That brings the total to 58,709 tech layoffs over the past two and a half months.

One previously unreported layoff we have been able to confirm is 10 people at classifieds search engine Oodle, which occurred last week and represents a 20% reduction. Another layoff happened at Rearden Commerce, which trimmed about 40 people, or 10 percent (and Rearden just raised $100 million, showing that no company is immune).

The biggest layoff this month was announced just today by Sun Microsystems, which will be reducing its headcount by 5,000 to 6,000 (15 to 18 percent). Other big tech companies also announced cuts earlier this week, including Applied Materials (1,800 layoffs), Nokia Siemens Networks (750), and National Semiconductor (330).

Let’s face it: Social media has become one of the hot buzzwords in tech circles. It used to be Web 2.0 and social networking, but now we have moved on to a broader term that encompasses not only social networking, but blogs, podcasts, user-generated content, social bookmarking, microblogging, and lifestreams. The rise of all these forms of new media has also created demand for people who can help companies position and market themselves within this new realm.

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research has been compiling a list of people who hold social media jobs. The list is nowhere near comprehensive, but the company hiring social media marketers, community managers, strategists, specialists, and consultants is impressive. Microsoft, IBM, Intel, GM, Cisco, AMD, Nationwide, MTV, and Google are only the beginning of this list. Companies big and small are hiring people at a rapid pace for social media roles.

But a year or three from now, will companies still be hiring for these positions? Should you be adding to your credentials so you can market yourself as a social media expert? Are social media jobs a fad or are they here to stay?

To answer that question, you really to have ask a different question: What’s the point of a social media job? Read the job description for any social media job listing and you’ll come across evangelist, community, marketing, engagement, and viral quite often. The jargon, though, can be summed up in two words: retention and growth.

Companies generally have one overarching goal: to increase profits. And anyone can tell you that keeping current customers (or users) and adding new ones is directly related to that single goal. These two things, keeping current users happy and adding new users, are the purposes of social media jobs.

And that’s why these jobs are here to stay.

Social media allows people to spread their message to hundreds, if not thousands, of friends, followers, and strangers. Some companies can only dream of that kind of reach, while others pay millions in advertising for the same effect. Digg allows a website to emerge from obscurity to prominence and Twitter allows a company to respond to customer complaints quickly (I’ve had personal experience with Comcast’s Twitter account).

As more social media tools pop up and current ones expand, the need to respond and promote to a growing online community will only grow. Companies that simply ignore the blogs and social media risk huge public debacles and lost revenue (just ask Sony how bad it can get).

Even if the title changes, the role of the social media marketer or manager is not going anywhere. Building community, reaching out to potential customers, building stronger relationships, creating buzz - they are fundamental goals to every company. So long as people use social media to share their thoughts and their complaints, the need for people to fill social media jobs will continue to grow.

And the companies that fill those roles now will be ahead of the game.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Steve Jobs Subpoenaed For Backdated Options CaseThe Daily Poll: How Did You Follow the Steve Jobs Keynote?eBay Cuts 125 Jobs WorldwideMySpace Jobs UK LaunchesCareerBuilder’s Facebook App Searches Personal DataBe a Digg Rockstar with Social Media Firefox ExtensionApple Giving iPhone Customers $100

Source:Mashable!

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

STARTUP DETAILS:

Company Name: CarOcean

20 word description: CarOcean - find best offer from “car ocean.”

CEO’s Pitch: A service that offers search and access to advertisements from the most popular auto sites in one place. Our highest priority has been ease of search and filtering existing ads. We’ve also put a lot of effort into increasing the speed of the search engine and the site itself.

We have made every effort to keep our advertisement database up to date, but sometimes some are out of date. To help control this issue, every advertisement has a frame with options. We’ve tried to keep the user interface as clean and simple as possible and would appreciate any comments you have on it. To contact us use the form here.We will do our best to improve the quality of the CarOcean service and will post each new functionality on our main page.

Mashable’s Take: CarOcean is a new UK-based classifieds search engine with a focus on the automobile trade. So far it’s aggregating classifieds and automobile sales advertisements from AutoTrader, eBay and Auto Exchange & Mart, providing users with a broader glance at available cars that are for sale. Upon entering a search query, you can sort your results based on various criteria (i.e. mileage, size, power) further narrow down the results by clicking on various filters like color, year, price and registration date.

All of these filters are actualely expandable, so there are additional filter options for each main category. For instance, the color filter can be narrowed further for a specific color like beige, red, etc. Such filters can be very helpful when it comes to finding the car you’re looking for, and heavy filter options for a niche search engine like CarOcean are possible given its focus on the automobile industry. As maintaining such a dynamic database can be quite overwhelming, CarOcean leaves some of the work to its end users, offering interactive reporting features so that things like expired advertisements can be marked by users.

One thing that may be particularly helpful for CarOcean users would be member accounts that allow users to bookmark and save listings, or even an entire search. While adding member accounts may be a large undertaking for a niche search engine like CarOcean, the site already offers URLs for any given search, which can be shared with friends. It wouldn’t be too far of a leap to offer RSS options to follow a given search as well. Another useful next step for CarOcean could also be recommendations based on user activity, similar to Oodle, which provides its third-party data for informing end users which prices are average (or otherwise), and more.

Sponsored by Sun Startup Essentials

MySpace peripherals like Schools and Classifieds don’t get as much attention as the core of MySpace’s larger site, but they still get a lot of action. If you’re an avid, or even casual MySpace user, you’re sure to notice that some of these peripheral sections of MySpace could use a little sprucing up, and with other social networks like Facebook offering more integrated uses for their applications, MySpace needs to keep pace.

That’s why it’s relaunched its Classifieds section, which is now powered by Oodle, meaning MySpace Classifieds will be a mere Craigslist clone with profile links no more. There are a few things which can come about as a result–deeper integration with users’ profiles and accounts for the promotion and social behavioral aspects of posting and searching classifieds, as well as a wider reach for those outside of MySpace that use Oodle’s classifieds network.

Oodle will be working closely with the MySpace APIs in the coming months in order to provide a more robust internal system for promoting ads within the MySpace community. That means better integration with user profiles, blogs, bulletin boards, etc. This only makes sense, as MySpace shifts its advertising capabilities to become more aligned with its applications platform. Users should benefit from opening standards for sharing information across one’s internal network as well.

There are some other features already employed by Oodle, such as pricing guides, that I find particularly helpful, and they’ll now be available for MySpace Classifieds users as well. This brings in more layers of useful functionality that most classifieds systems don’t have, making it a more personalized experience overall.

In terms of any further marketing and advertising capabilities for third-party brands that would like to dip into the MySpace user base, becoming a part of the Oodle network may become a useful alternative. As MySpace reports 1M uniques per month for its classifieds system and 500k new ads created every day, the need for MySpace’s Classifieds system to spread its reach and become more efficient for its own users will eventually create more benefits for others that utilize the Oodle network.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Oodle Does Classifeds for the New York PostOodle Teams with the Better Business Bureau to Set Classifieds GuidelinesIs It a Good Deal? Oodle Insights Will Tell You.Facebook Classifieds Live, Powered By OodleOodle Classifieds Gets PersonalOodle Talks Like A PirateOodle Launches BandTracker