Nano-Blogging

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeLZCy-_m3s

I ran across this video on youtube today and found it interesting. In this "mockumentary" as they call it, Andy Bouve directs the video to portray a message that Twitter takes up too much time to utilize so they would come up with a "nano-blogging" system called Flutter. I find it an interesting form of 'accidental' marketing for Twitter itself. The video gives Twitter an impersonal image, where on the contrary, I believe it allows people to network on a more personal level. What better way to really understand someone than to have access to their blogs, writing samples, facebook accounts, and daily knowlege resources through Twitter?

What is this thing called Twitter?

With the digital age on an ongoing uphill climb, what is the best way for students in the marketing field to enable themselves with the best possible sources of learning? After just recently registering for Twitter, and posting it on my Facebook page, many of my peers asked me to explain what Twitter was. It got me thinking about the way we learn at the university level.

We take class after class on marketing in order to finish our degree audit in time to graduate. We learn material for the main purpose of passing a test on the subject. Whether it be Advertising, Research, Problems in Marketing, International Marketing, Retail, Sales, etc... Students as a whole are not learning the importance of social media and how it plays a significant part in the roles we will hold in companies in the near future. With professors that may or may not be up to date on the new mediums available to help market products, students are not grasping the concepts soon enough. Online tools such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube are powerful marketing tools that we should be learning to use as soon as possible. Without the aid of college professors or mentors, how do students know how to best use the resources given to them? The advertising world is so fast-paced that it is hard to keep up.

I recently attended the AMA International Collegiate Conference in New Orleans with my school's chapter. I was enlightened to find out from President of Zehnder Communications, Tom Martin, that these tools were not only great ways to advertise products and ideas via the web, but to network as well. With the job market being competitive on not only the national, but international level today, would it not be nice for students to be educated on these types of media sooner in their college careers? I think so.