University Offering Master’s Degree In Podcasting, Twitter And Social Networking
Mar 30th, 2009 | By James Lewin | Category: Podcasting 
UK’s Birmingham City University has announced plans to offer a a master’s degree on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Bebo. The University’s MA in Social Media will also explain how to set up blogs and publish podcasts.
“During the course we will consider what people can do on Facebook and Twitter, and how they can be used for communication and marketing purposes,” explains course convener Jon Hickman.
“There has been significant interest in the course already, and it will definitely appeal to students looking to go into professions including journalism and PR.”
“Social media is very important for jobs within the marketing and communications sector, as a skill set within other jobs, and as an industry within itself,” adds Hickman.
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What if Facebook and Twitter go under in the future. This master’s program should not focus on these two social networking sites. It should be broad.
Whenever schools teach computers, they always end up being behind the times.
They should focus on teaching concepts that apply to new media rather than things like Twitter.
Will Twitter even be around by the time they graduate?
[…] Die Birmingham City University will demnächst einen MA für Social Media anbieten. Master of Twitter? Klingt gut. Mehr dazu bei Podcasting News. […]
James and Georg, your what-ifs seem to be genuine questions, but I feel they are off the mark.
A course such as that can only be designed for future theory and current practical reality.
The focus 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.
Yes, Facebook and Twitter could somehow fail. While not impossible, I think either site disappearing in under five years to be extremely unlikely. They have 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.
Twitter recently past its second anniversary and it’s really only starting to break into mainstream awareness.
Even a steep decay curve would see them be popular, viable services for at least three years after that.
I’m prepared to wager they are both still going strong five years from now.
Ten years – who knows?
What’s more likely are 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 fields.
While Facebook’s Groups go towards this, there’s still the public hubbub to contend with, long lost people you never talked with at school throwing virtual custard tarts at you for instance.
I think Private Groups will be the killer evolution for both Facebook and Twitter.
Accountants.Facebook.com
Architects.Facebook.com
Authors.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.
Hope this gives some food for thought…
evolvingly yours,
Bradley C Hughes
http://twitter.com/entregreeneur