Students & Social Media: The Future is Bright

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I was recently invited by the communication department at Rochester Institute of Technology to give a brief lecture on the for-profit public relations milieu. It’s been so long since I was back at college that the students made me feel a bit like an old man. Nevertheless, I persevered through my presentation on what agency PR is, what corporate PR is, and what Text 100 has to offer. In particular, I pointed out how Text 100′s peer media practice and Second Life expertise is a big differentiator for us. You could feel the interest level in the room perk right up.

Text 100 isn’t new to the peer media landscape, especially not as the first PR firm to have a presence in Second Life. But these students have been utilizing all kinds of peer media for years now. When I was in school, AOL Instant Messenger was all the rage. But now with the advent of YouTube, MySpace, FaceBook, Friendster and a cadre of other tools and applications, the students sitting before me in the auditorium were no newbies (read: "n00bs") to online social environments.

But the interest they showed in Second Life was really astounding. While only a dozen raised their hands as actually active in-world, I think many more were able to grasp the scale of the SL economy and the opportunity for building brand awareness through PR. After my presentation, Dr. Susan Barnes from RIT told me they were offering a class in conjunction with RIT’s Lab for Social Computing for winter quarter focusing solely on Second Life.

In the end, it was great to see so many young students so excited about PR and the future opportunities for the field. Based on the acumen demonstrated in post-presentation questions many of them brought to me, I’d say the future is in good hands.

Kevin Ptak

Technorati Tags: Rochester Institute of Technology, Second Life, Text 100