Birmingham City University to offer MA in Social Media, including Bebo, Facebook, Twitter
A course such as this Ma in Social Media now offered by Birmingham City University must strike a curriculum design balance between future theoretical evolutions of social media and the current practical reality of its usage today.
The course outline says, “There is a dichotomy within this nascent industry. On the one hand established businesses are seeking to co-opt the tools of social media and use them for commercial gain; on the other third sector organisations are making use of these tools to build complex and conversational communication strategies for minimal cost.”
This suggests a divide between commercial usage of social media and sociological usage of social media. How clear is this divide? There’s still some degree of resistance to purely commercial participation in some SM niches, but the resistance is good natured for the most part; there’s certainly no organised social media jihad against commercial participation in my experience, not like it was on Usenet circa 1990 with prot0-spammers Canter and Siegel being the famous focus of wrath for their incessant newsgroup spamming.
The focus of an MA in Social Media naturally needs to be on those sites that currently have the global audiences that give them relevance. Both Facebook and Twitter have that level of traction.
Right now, today, Facebook and Twitter are the current leading social media sites for English speakers in terms of hands-on results for people in the social media space, that’s why they would naturally focus on those two at present.
Yes, there’s still MySpace, but these days I think its in now primarily focused on the categories of teen networking and entertainment promotion, rather than being across all fields.
As posited by commenters James and Georg, on PodcastingNews.com where I read about this, Facebook and Twitter could somehow fail. I found their suggestions of this to be off the cuff and even naive.
While not impossible, I consider either service disappearing in under five years to be unlikely in the extreme. They both have sufficient virtual mass, velocity, inertia and viral characteristics that will see them both continue to grow in popularity and stickiness for at least the next two years minimum before reaching a plateau.
Twitter recently past its second anniversary and it’s really only starting to break into mainstream awareness.
Even a steep decay curve would see Facebook and Twitter be popular, viable services for at least three years after that.
After little more than five years, Facebook is apparently around the 200 million member mark now but how many of them are relatively active users (login more than once a week) is uncertain.
I’m prepared to wager they are both still going strong five years from now.
Ten years - who knows?
What’s a likely scenario for usage of these services?
I expect there will be spin-offs of Facebook and Twitter that are semi-private gated communities where people have to be part of some loose association, affiliation, etc. such that there is a higher signal to noise ratio for those people in their own fields.
While Facebook’s Groups go towards this, there’s still the public hubbub to contend with, such as long lost people you practically never talked with at school throwing virtual custard tarts at your virtual head for instance.
I think private or membership based sites will be the killer evolution for both Facebook and Twitter.
Accountants.Facebook.com
Architects.Facebook.com
Authors.Facebook.com
NetworkMarketers.Facebook.com
DogWhisperers.Twitter.com
MutantJugglers.Twitter.com
PigWrestlers.Twitter.com
etc.
Graduates of such a Masters degree programme would hopefully be equipped with the ability to advocate, participate and or manage aspects of such communities, so I see it as potentially a pretty useful qualification.
Their education will be especially well structured and functional if they hire guest lecturers of the calibre of @silkcharm, @mpesce @coachdeb @leolaporte @guykawasaki and other notable social media experts to teach it.
Being Australian I have to refer to the antipodean and USA experts as I’m not really in the UK social media loop.
Perhaps someone from the UK could offer some further commentary on this course and its implications
References:
http://www.bcu.ac.uk/courses/media/socialmedia
Twitter Updates for 2009-03-24
- @aDB MSY WTF IHT TRS GON WUC! #
- @aDB Hope you can get some IDE satisfaction somewhere… Try Beecomm in Merrylands if all else fails, they’re very good. #
Powered by Twitter Tools.
Twitter Updates for 2009-03-21
- Exploring latest cashmap to be offered via Simpleology, “Voice of the Customer”. Also revisiting the “Financial Survival Strategy Cashmap”. #
Powered by Twitter Tools.
Twitter Updates for 2009-03-17
- Seems that the http://blogandgrow.com tweet stream update by Twitter Tools is pulling in someone else’s tweets. Strange and undesirable. #
- That’s what happens when one neglects one’s blog… weeds start to grow up in the cracks and take over the garden… #
- Right then, the real @blogandgrow tweets should now appear in http://BlogAndGrow.com once again. If this appears on the blog, it is working. #
Powered by Twitter Tools.
Outsourcing and Outtasking - Saving Time with Virtual Assistants
This is a post I published earlier today over at EasyWizards.com
Thought I’d share it with my BlogAndGrow.com readers as well, since EasyWizards.com is so new it hasn’t been picked up by Google yet.
You have a million things to do.
Its a sunny afternoon and your friends are all at the beach or hanging out at the park.
You’re hanging out to join them but you have to research some articles on outtasking and saving time with virtual assistants for a blog post you’re working on.
Imagine how great it would be to delegate the ‘lesser mortal stuff’ of searching for the articles to extra brains and hands?
Picture this, you login to an easy-to-use dashboard that features your latest tasks with updates from your own team of Virtual Assistants.
You write and submit the following task:
“Please find me 10 articles from article marketing web sites with republishing rights so I can use them on my blogs.
Article Subject: outtasking and saving time with virtual assistants, how to work with virtual assistants.
Send me an email with links to the 10 articles.”
That takes two minutes.
You grab your towel, sun glasses, backpack, jump on your bike and head to the beach.
When you come home you’ll have an email with the 10 articles you need to build a comprehensive resource category in your blog on the subject of of outtasking and saving time with virtual assistants.
Congratulations, you have just leveraged your time, freeing you up to enjoy the lifestyle you deserve to enjoy with your friends and loved ones.
Get a TimeSvr virtual assistant account and reclaim your life and time today.
If you’re down at Bronte beach this afternoon, be sure to say G’day.
yours in success,
Bradley C Hughes
Robert Blackman - MLMMastermind, MLM Big Money - fraud and scam artist
As it turns out, I’m not alone in my experience of being ripped off by Mr Robert Blackman of RobertBlackMan.com, MLMMasterMind.com and MLMBigMoney.com.
Here is what some of his other victims had to say about Mr Blackman:
This from Jack:
“mlmmastermind lead system is a total fraud, i signed up for the free leads pack for $7.95 s and h,if you like it you can do the program and pay the $104 a month program after it,well I never recieved my lead packs, i had tried emailing and calling him but no answer,the voice mail didnt even work, i couldnt leave a message
I canceled my account and asked for my $7.95 s and h back to me since i didnt recieve no package and to cancel my account, well i get charged the $104.95 anyways and I finally did get a hold of him last week, he said he would refund my money back to me well still havnt got it and now his phone number is now direct to voice mail but again cant leave a message and sent him 10 emails, i am rathe pissed off at his service and told him on many occassions, i am going to do a chargeback onhim because i enver recieved no products and he wont answer his freaking phone or his emails, stay away from mlmmastermind.com, the funny thing some big guys like joe schroeder and others say this guy is fantastic but this guy is a fraud in my eyes”
And this from Cashman:
“Blackman has a long history of this sort of activity. I wish more consumers knew the real deal about this guy. People get lured in thinking they’re getting “something for nothing”.
He gives the industry a black eye.
I don’t know how the guy sleeps at night.
Cashman”
http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?t=30299
Another very similar experience from D in KC, Missouri:
“He promises big, takes your money, does not deliver, then does not respond to phone calls or emails. I have requested full refund, and will keep you updated with hopefully good information. If, not I will update with the complete story including what I purchased, what I did and did not receive, and dollar amounts.
D
kc, Missouri
U.S.A.”
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/327/RipOff0327008.htm
Someone else is obviously having trouble as well, but their story is not yet told in detail:
http://robertblackmanmlmmastermind.blogspot.com/
Looking for my favourite videos? See the “MyTube” Category
I finally figured out why the BlogAndGrow Deep Blue themed home page template keeps breaking. Turns out that every time I create a posting that includes embedded video code objects from Vimeo or YouTube, the template breaks.
So now rather than including video postings on the home page, I will only add them into the MyTube category and one or another categories if appropriate.
Phew, glad that’s sorted!
Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US
In PHR’s new report, Broken Laws, Broken Lives, we have for the first time medical evidence to confirm first-hand accounts of men who endured torture by US personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay. These men were never charged with any crime.
read more | digg story
My latest letter to Robert Blackman
Dear Robert Blackman,
I submitted a version of this at http://www.mlmbigmoney.com/
On his website, Mr Blackman asks his prospects to answer the question:
Q: What’s my #1 marketing problem?
Here is my latest answer to Mr Blackman.
A: I have been too much of a victim when dealing with online gurus.
Here’s one example.
In March 2006 I spent hundreds of dollars with an MLM marketing and leads generation guru and I never received the products I paid for.Even after 18 months, dozens of emails, phone calls, faxes and a promise to both ship the products and refund my money, I never received either the products or a refund, either one of which would have been the minimum fair compensation for 18 months of attempts to get my orders fulfilled.
After more than a year of attempted communications, the guru’s office manager finally responded, declaring that the guru had never had an unresolved complaint in more than ten years online. She promised I would receive both the product and a refund, but neither was ever forthcoming.
Mr Blackman, what do you suggest I do?
Why am I addressing this question to you?
Why, because the MLM guru whose office manager finally promised to both ship the product and refund the money after 18 months of attempts to get the service supplied was… YOU!!
I’m still down over $300 and without the allegedly fantastic training material that you produce. I felt ill seeing your latest online video, where you’re driving a Mercedes, bounding into your mansion all fat and happy and I can’t even afford to repair my 18 year old Toyota sedan.
I hope you feel at least some small twinge of unhappiness next time you’re getting into your shiny new Mercedes SUV after you read this.
I have repeatedly questioned your honour and integrity in my correspondence to you, to which you have not answered in any respect. In times gone by, that would be sufficient cause for a duel with pistols or swords.
Maybe you don’t even care about your honour and integrity?
What kind of a man are you anyway?
Yours truly,
Bradley C Hughes
My question to ABC’s Q and A show panel
Why don’t any politicians acknowledge the true cause of inflation, fractional reserve lending which allows banks to issue hundreds of billions in credit literally ‘out of thin air’? Why don’t ALP and Liberal governments take back our currency issuing powers?