Here’s a short video excerpt from the 2010 Teens in Tech conference.

Teens In Tech Conference 2010 from ReadWriteWeb on Vimeo.

Many of our more venerable educators, administrators, and board members think that Social Networking (aka Twitter, Facebook, MySpace) is a fad of sorts. They are surprised when I tell them these should be integrated into their curricula. When they ask why, I tell them that companies are hiring people who know how to properly use these tools.

Since many of them often don’t believe me, here’s a “real world” example:

After we lost all our belongings in a house fire over the summer, and winter has rolled around, I find I have no winter boots. So I send out a casual post to my social network:

When I make a post it gets delivered to everyone who is “following” me (both on Twitter and Facebook). So about 800 people were able to see my note about the new snow in Juneau. One of them replied:

To which I replied:

And now things get interesting. Because Twitter is an open social network, you can tune in to public conversations. You can even save search results so that you’ll be notified whenever a key word appears. This is what smart businesses do. They monitor the social stream for mentions of their brand, so they can stay in touch with their community.

I was surprised, and impressed, to see that Zappos noticed my post and sent me a nice reply. Zappos is a great online store, and they prove it by being savvy enough to tune into the public Twitter stream. They even gave me a nice smiley face =).

But that’s not where the story ends. Later that night I finally selected the boots I wanted to try and placed the order. After I did so I replied to @Zappos_Service:

And they responded with a nice, personal message:

But they’re not the only savvy company monitoring the stream, because this morning I got this message, also with a nice smiley face:

The interaction with not only the vendor, but the manufacturer of the boots was a great experience for me. It solidified my faith in both brands and gives me the feeling that they’re not just faceless corporations but people wanting to connect with customers. This feeling makes me happy, and those companies know it’s a worthy investment because a happy customer is a repeat customer.

So if you are surprised when you learn that companies are hiring people with social networking skills, don’t be.

Jane Hart shares with us a list compiled recently when 278 “learning professionals” were asked their top 10 tools for learning. Then she made a slideshow of the list: