A Slave For Britney? Spears Seeks Assistant

For Harvard seniors anxious about securing a job, at least one new position has opened up: managing Britney Spears’ Facebook page.

A Harvard alumni who is in charge of Spears’s digital media and online properties recently sent an e-mail to a private list-serve of Harvard alumni from California looking for a “social media guru” to oversee Spears’ presence on YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.

The news that the job posting had been sent over a Harvard e-mail list quickly made the rounds on celebrity blogs. Joanna Douglas, a columnist for a Yahoo.com entertainment Web site, questioned whether such a job calls for a Harvard diploma.

“While we can’t blame Britney for taking extra care with her public image these days, does it really take a high-priced, Ivy League degree to update your Facebook status?” she said.

Joseph M. Nejman ’03—the founder of Brandcasting Unlimited, Spears’ online media firm—defended the decision. He sent the job posting to the private e-mail list, he said, because using an alumni network is an effective way to fill a job.
“I never said it had to be Harvard,” he said.  

Nejman added that Brandcasting is just looking for someone with the right skill set—“and someone with a lot of free time,” he said.

Spears’ and several other celebrities’ Twitter accounts were hacked last week.

The job description sent out in the e-mail said that the social media guru would be responsible for an array of duties, including driving traffic from exclusive photos and videos, managing the social networks’ traffic reports and membership data, and analyzing community activity and conversation to advise content strategy and brand positioning.

Nejman said the job would likely require more than 40 hours a week.
He said he thought Spears’ decision to hire someone to manage her online presence was not unusual.

“I think the majority of high profile celebrities aren’t spending their time everyday updating their profile pages” or “responding to fans,” he said.

After getting numerous e-mails from his friends about the job posting, Peter C. Shields ’09 said he applied for the job.

“I sent in my resume because it’s probably the only thing I’m qualified to do,” he said, calling himself a Spears “devotee.”

It sounds like the “easiest, stupidest job in the entire world,” he added. “I didn’t really understand why they were looking for a Harvard student.”

—Staff writer Eric P. Newcomer can be reached at newcomer@fas.harvard.edu.