Do likes and plusones make keyword authorities?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Andrei Gherghel: Yes +Rotimi Orimoloye , they are authority....but in their niche. Of course their posts/tweets/likes influence a lot of their fans and they can easily promote a brand or product in their pages. Its marketing because they are big influencers.
• 
  Rotimi Orimoloye: I hear you +Andrei Gherghel, and I know I probably sound crazy.
  
  But I wouldn't even think of this if I wasn't convinced that there were many musicians out there who are nothing more than bathing suit models.
  
  So my question is, "am I an authority simply because my fans say so?".
  Or what if a soccer star decides to do something else after retirement... How much would his knowledge and experience in that new profession influence his following?
  
  It's irritating sometimes, when Lebron James says, "It's raining in Miami today" and it gets 4000 likes.
  
  I'm just thinking  ;aloud really. ;
  When the internet becomes the major stage where everyone in the world has to compete for relevance.
  What happens then?
  I really hope the search engines have (or have plans to develop) stronger indicators than likes, follows and links, for stuff like these.
• 
  Justin Y: I don't always think they would be considered the authority, it could mean that they have a stronger influence and that they could be getting a lot of their followers through traditional marketing or ZMOT. 
• 
  Masatake Wasa: I think popularity and authority are two different things. Being popular doesn't necessarily make someone an authority, and I do not think being an authority necessarily has to mean being popular. If authority were purely a matter of being popular, then it can be manipulated by sheer numbers.
  
  It is not going to be easy for Google, for example, to come up with metrics that can judge contents qualitatively in each instance, thus able to assign authority, especially in something divisive or controversial.
• 
  Andrei Gherghel: Well...I see things in a different way. At least regarding the internet. Lets take a singer for example. He plays good music and gets popular pretty fast. A lot of people "like" his profile, fan page...etc. He won't increase his popularity if he didn't played well. This means that he is an authority in his niche. Social media for example is purely based on popularity. Search engines basic algorithms rank a page by its popularity (number of links, likes, shares google+...etc). Big brand in SEO for example are considered to be an authority. Why ? Because a lot of people like and share their pages but also because the information they provide is useful. So, both the singer and the SEO brand are at the same time "popularity" and "authority". There is always the second case, where the singer did played well some years ago and is to old now to perform well but, he is still considered to be an authority even if his popularity decreased. ;
• 
  Rotimi Orimoloye: Thanks a lot guys for your contributions.
  +Andrei Gherghel ;I guess I am one of those grumpy people who aren't all that convinced about the "purity" of the dynamics behind the so-called popularity of today's artistes. ;