We have spent a lot of time this semester talking about all the social media sites available to everyone and how they can be used. One thing I haven’t thought about is that there are people who get paid to play… I mean work on these sites all day. Things are constantly being updated on many corporations social media platforms so someone has to be adding this content, it is just something that had never really crossed my mind.
According to this article found on mediabistro.com NBC News has just hired on two more employees to beef up their Digital Media Department.They just hired John Keegan as the NBC Director of Technology for Digital Media. Keegan comes from Fox News and will primarily work on two of NBC’s websites, the Grio.com and msnbc.com. The other new hire comes from the Huffington Post. In two weeks Craig Kanalley is joining NBC as their new Social Media Editor, where he will oversee the use of social media as a reporting platform.
These announcements come from a memo that Vivian Schiller posted on November 21st. In the memo she always mentions that Ryan Osborn, who ran all thesocial media sites the last two years has now been promoted to Senior Director of Digital Media. Finally it discusses that Bonnie Optekman is now the Vice President of Emerging Technologies.
These are a lot of fancy titles for jobs that really didn’t exist probably ten years ago, but thanks to the spike in social media across all the new platforms its easy to understand why they are needed.
I know that with the increase in social media, there will be an increase in demand for specialists in the area. Can you imagine getting paid to play on Twitter or Facebook? I use Facebook every once in awhile at my job, but its only to promote our show the students create. I don’t really know enough about it to do much more than that.
Would you want to play… I mean work with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter all day? Let me know your thoughts and post a comment below.
I find it especially prudent to discuss the jobs emerging in the world of social media beyond that of creating and maintaining the actual sites. These instances you discussed are prime examples. These individuals are going to work all day one-on-one with social media in order to support or promote their company. You make an excellent point when you say these jobs are new to the changing society. Ten years ago, we would not have had a need for such positions; but think what the next ten years will bring with them. What new positions will we need as social media continues to evolve? Kind of an interesting thought...
ReplyDeleteWorking with a social media site at school I can believe how new jobs are being created because of this tool. Updating, refreshing, reorganizing, and energizing your social media site is a time consuming job. This takes time, patience, creativity and energy that is a full time job. The people who play at this really are working. They need to be savvy in their marketing skills and social networking. These jobs may be the wave of the future. I can definitely see a need at our school for such a person.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be an interesting job at first. The job itself seems like it would be fun and laidback, but could also be very stressful. Millions of people use social media and when something doesn’t go right it would be on you. That may or may not be something that could cause stress. I think it would depend on the person, but it would be fun to say you manage those sites. Great blog!
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