In an article recently published by the Wall Street Journal it talks about many big consumer product companies heading back to school. But, they are not heading back to school for their own personal education; instead they are using classes to help promote their company image and/or products. Some of these companies include Sprint Nextel Corporation, Levi Strauss & Co. and Mattel Inc. They are sponsoring college classes and graduate-level research to get help with their online marketing. With their donations to these colleges they are in return receiving advertising, research, promotion of their company and a local Internet push. The sponsoring businesses are using these classes to increase their online presence with social networks such as Facebook and Twitter through these college students who are more greatly involved with the online networks than their company was.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704476604576158643370380186.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
I found this line to be particularly entertaining: computer science is increasingly employed in the study of human behavior and shopping habits. While this is great for marketing, it's sad that facebook and twitter have become a part of the social norm, as a result personal communication skills are dwindling. I'm all for technology; however, it's kind of sad that colleges are promoting this form of communication over true face to face, I would think at that level they'd want to focus on the 'basics', communication being one of them.
ReplyDeleteTweets, Facebook, blogs, etc... They all have one thing in common. They can not be trusted. I could write something today on how radiation from Japan made my goldfish grow 3 eyes and post it to my Facebook page and tweet it. By the end of the day tomorrow I bet that I would have at least 6 people believe me and then those people would spread the fiction onto their friends who in turn would believe. And on and on and on.
ReplyDeleteWithin a college atmosphere or even a business they should never teach or use Facebook or tweets to relay information. Online information can very easily be modified or misinterpreted which could have negative consequences. My belief is that Facebook and Twitter is for highschool, Linkedin is for college where people are trying to establish networks, and business professionals should use paper to relay their information. What I mean by that is within a professional atmosphere people gain more respect if they publish a book, or write an article for business week, or anything that is published by a second party. Facebook and Twitter the author is doing the publishing and nobody is proofing their work. This is very risky.