Those in communication and marketing likely realize that quantifying the number of followers one has on Twitter (particularly 250) is not a very meaningful number - unless Best Buy is going to screen the quality of those followers (are they primarily twitter spammers or advertisers? Are they friends, industry experts, etc.?)... Also, how is that individual engaging those followers? What type of content are they tweeting, are they receiving tweets and RT's from their followers? I'm actually surprised they didn't add "Has 500 friends on Facebook", as another requirement...

However, congrats to Best Buy... if nothing else, they got a lot of people talking about them and viewing their job description! (Now THAT's good marketing...)

I don't think that a company's social media efforts should be in the hands of a marketer, nor do I believe that a graduate degree is necessary to do the job well.

Whether it's Facebook, Twitter, a company blog or other platform, effective social media is about storytelling. And, frankly, a lot of marketers are all about the sale, not the story.

Unless the person(s) behind a brand knows what a good story is and how to tell it, the company's social media efforts will fail, regardless of one's "expertise" or credentials.

I agree that a degree of some sort relating to business in important to the position(perhaps Marketing or Communications focused). It's true, everyone can send Tweets on Twitter, or has a Facebook account, but how do those Tweets support the overall business model? And how does it fit in with the traditional marketing mix?

Remember, Social Media is currently regarded as only a tool in the bag of Marketing tricks and should be used in combination with other marketing initiatives to maximize effectiveness for a corporation.

I'm going to side with Best Buy on this too. Proficiency with the tools of the job is obviously key. But a senior management position at a company like Best Buy also requires formal business training attained in an advanced degree program.

Your typical “social media intern” knows how to use the tools, but may not know how to support the business’s strategic objectives, build consensus in a silo’d organization, etc.

A mix of skill sets is best, and Best Buy is in a position to shoot for the moon on hires like this.

I have to disagree with your comment stating that "the social media presence shouldn’t be handled by the least-senior on the communications ladder, the interns, but the most senior–someone more like a senior manager."

This reeks of bias and old-fashioned, linear attitudes toward today's youth and entry-level practitioner.

Then again, you said "...what could you learn in a journalism or communications, business–or social media–master’s degree program that you couldn’t learn by simply being active in social media?" With that said, it seems that the best attribute in understanding social media is to be an avid participant and observer. While you and Brian Solis may not trust junior/entry-level practitioners, you may be doing yourselves a disservice if you think that a senior-level manager is capable of doing the task effectively simply because of their position on the totem pole. A good leader understands his/her weaknesses and shortcomings and will delegate duties to someone with more experience in an area than they have, also but guide them so that their actions produce the best outcome for the overall strategy.

If experience is what is valued, then (generally speaking), why not give the role to someone who has used it much more often ... rather than to an individual who (in general) jumped on the bandwagon and applied business theories without even understanding the tactic they used.

Color me skeptical of anyone labeled as a "social media expert" -- and I hear the term dropped incessantly these days. Oh, good, so you have a Facebook page and ample time to post vane inanities from your iPhone on Twitter. So does half the planet.

What I'd like to see--since the hallmarks of social media are authenticity and transparency--are for social media job postings to include salary information. I think it would reveal that there is probably a really wide gap in salaries for what is a very similar position but called many different things.

Your comment about the graduate degree is well-taken, however using social media does not just require experience as a "twitterer". Social media is - essentially - a communication channel, and to leverage any such channel effectively, a person/organization/corporation needs to approach it strategically and in a manner that will help reach overall goals and objectives. An advanced degree in strategic communications or marketing would go a long way toward helping a candidate succeed in a position like this one at Best Buy.