Every time I read a story about Fatal1ty, the professional gamer, I laugh a little at all the times my parents told me to get off of the Atari, Commodore, or Sega - that no one could make a living playing video games and to hit the books. What they really should have said was that I wouldn't make a living playing video games (I'm not that lucky.)

Fast forward to today and some of us hear the same parental sentiment with the youth texting and blogging - "Put that down and get your studies done - you won't make a living typing with your thumbs!" But in this day and age - there's evidence to argue that concern... and degree programs to back up the rebuttal.

Here's a quick summary (ReBlog) from Web Strategy by Jeremiah where he interviews Vanina Delobelle, who has a PhD in Social Media and is the Global Product Director in charge of Social Media at Monster. I'd encourage everyone, job seekers and employers alike, to check out the entire interview (and to bookmark Jeremiah!)

Vanina, how’d you get into social media?

I started to blog in 2003 and lived the emergence of social media. Behaviours were very different, tools were enabling to engage people better and this new wave was very exciting. At that time I was running a marketing consultancy company targeting SMB and I realized that these new tools could be adopted very easily for...

Regarding your PhD in social media, what were your goals, what were you hoping to prove?

My research was very innovative, there were not many people working in this space at that time. It has been hard to find scientific researches that could help me. This trend was mainly driven by business. I wanted to prove academically these...

What were your findings?

Consumers want to take part of conversations happening with companies, they want to be involved, they want to share and this is the company’s interest to do the same with the market. My research was a scientific validation of Pinko marketing and social media use for companies. We could also define some kind of new marketing model for...

How will you apply this to your day job, what’s next?

This research has been a first step as the market is changing every day. I keep on updating my knowledge in this area. I think also that the big next step for social media is going to be...

Where can we find you online? I’m sure folks will have questions for you.