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Social Media Dream Jobs
By David Berkowitz
Expert Author
Article Date: 2008-08-19
Could it be commonplace someday to create a resume that shows how much time you spend using social media? Is that really a job skill?
US News and World Report thinks "the Facebook future is now" and released "The Seven Best Jobs for Facebook Addicts" (though I only counted six). The jobs include recruiters, tech reporters, product managers, and photographers. They didn't mention event planning, which has become a cottage industry on the site.
On my blog I offered a few other picks for Facebook-inspired careers, such as matchmaker, professional Scrabble player, contact importer, and Jewdar technician. What about other social media sites, though? Here are some jobs that could benefit from other social media skill sets.
Digg
VH1 or E! producer: How do you get the experience to create those massive programs about the 100 worst celebrity breakups or 25 things you didn't know about Topher Grace? Digg's power users excel at this, creating and promoting any content that's in the form of numbered lists.
Infomercial celebrity: If you go on digg, you'll likely find some post about 20 things you never knew you could do with a Wii remote. This is the greatest site for fans of the phrase "and that's not all!" For some reason, you click and read the whole thing as if your day would not be complete otherwise. All these lists need are calls to action.
Twitter
Book editor: Just imagine if a Twitter user got his hands on "War and Peace." It would be pared down to a few pages, with each chapter summarized in 140 characters or less. It would open, "@AnnaPScherer tells @PrinceVasili about war horrors of antichrist;. @PrinceVasili just wants a good cup of tea." See how well Twitter users can get to the heart of everything?
Personal assistant: Ever wish someone was paying attention to your every whim? Twitter users excel at this, though many are too fickle and would wind up following someone else as soon as they got bored of you.
MySpace
Escort: This doesn't need much explanation if you get the same kind of mail on here that I do.
Interior Designer: The whole point of a MySpace layouts is to make people feel at home and express themselves. Why confine that to the digital world?
StumbleUpon
Film critic: Do you give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down? StumbleUpon users can dream of following in Roger Ebert's footsteps thanks to their rating skills.
Del.icio.us
Librarian: How great would it be to go into a library and find every book tagged appropriately, and you can then browse the stacks by tag instead of obscure numerical systems? Then again, it's all much easier just using the Kindle.
FriendFeed
Asset manager: On FriendFeed, you can take stock of others' entire digital portfolios and get a sense of their social capital. Once one masters social capital, managing tangible capital's the next step.
Stardoll
Fashion designer: Imagine Project Runway: 2012 (which, please, better be back on Bravo by then). Some of the portfolio shots you see could be from social shopping sites like this.
When I was in middle school, I wasn't sure what I was going to do for a career, and I told others at the time that whatever job I'd wind up in probably hadn't been invented yet. Similarly, for avid users of these social media sites, many of the jobs they'll wind up in - and of course create - probably don't exist yet. We'll have to see where all the tagging and tweeting leads.
I meant to post this last week; it originally ran in MediaPost. Posting will be light this week as I have some downtime, but check back shortly for more.
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About the Author:
David Berkowitz is Director of Strategic Planning for 360i and oversees the Search Informed Marketing firm's Emerging Media Practice. Every Tuesday, he pens the Search Insider column for MediaPost, with over 100 articles published to date. He often speaks at events covering marketing, media, and technology; his previous engagements include Ad:Tech, Consumer Electronics Show - Digital Hollywood, MediaPost's Search Insider Summit, and many others. He has also blogged extensively with MarketersStudio.com, MarketingVox, nowEurope, AdTechBlog, and others.
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