Tweeting for a Living: The Future of Social Media

Do others complain you spend too much time on Facebook or Twitter?

For one social media obsessed Sleepy Hollow High School graduate, tweeting may become a career.

Brittany James, 22, is one of 18 current nominees to become the first ever tweet jockey, or TJ, for MTV.

The 2010 Quinnipiac University graduate, armed with a public relations degree, is trying to break into the business.

"I'm really hoping to get a job that is in PR where I can use my social media skills," she said.

James said she first learned about Twitter through a college course—"I decided to check it out and played around with it a lot."

She started by following pop artist Britney Spears, and last summer, James noticed a lot of people from the public relations industry on the network.

She soon began taking part in PR "chats" and garnered followers rapidly.

"I saw that as a huge benefit," she said.

James, who currently boasts 1,250 followers on Twitter (and 950 Facebook friends), was recently "followed" by @MTVTJ and received an MTV Facebook friend request.

A week or two later, she got a phone call about the TJ competition, and was asked if she wanted to enter for a chance to win a one-year, $100,000 contract to be the official tweet jockey for the entertainment company.

"I was jumping up and down in a parking lot," she recalled. "It's always been a dream for me to work at MTV...including social media makes it so much better because that's what I want to do."

In addition to moving to the Big Apple, the winner will start off by tweeting live from the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards on September 12.

Over the course of a year, the TJ will interact via Twitter with fans, answer questions, and offer insight and backstage looks at shows on a full-time basis.

But before the winner is announced via a live broadcast on MTV on August 8, the 20 total contenders will vie for votes here on Facebook from July 7 - 22.

Five finalists will compete on the live show for viewers' votes by participating in a series of Twitter-based challenges. Contestants' influence, popularity, engagement and trust will be measured using Edelman's "TweetLevel" rating.

James, or @bitty_boop, is thrilled about the process and has been tweeting excitedly about the commercial featuring her and the other contestants and their pictures recently featured in Times Square. She also created a Facebook fan page and blogged about the competition to spread the word to her (extremely large) network of friends.

The tweet addict, who has composed more than 17,500 over her two-year involvement, has become close with the other contestants, who hail from other parts of the country including Washington D.C., the Midwest and west coast.

James is relieved to have found a community of like-minded "tweeps" when it comes to Twitter.

"We all have a lot in common," she said. "We talk to each other like we're best friends."

She acknowledges skeptics who claim Twitter can provide an overload of seemingly irrelevant information, but stands by the site's value.

"You get information a whole lot faster," she explained. "I don't need to know when someone is having lunch, but Twitter is really just so much more than that."

James, who said she doesn't know what to do with herself when the Twitter "Fail Whale" appears, tweets about everything from public relations news to cupcakes to celebrity gossip.

"I really like building relationships," she said. "Twitter is my thing; I absolutely love it."

To learn more about the MTV TJ search and see Brittany James' official MTV profile, see here.