Universities are getting more involved with different types of tech integration, and a good portion of this is being driven by big data trends.  Barnes and Noble College, the world’s largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company operating 705 bookstores in 50 states, for example, pioneers social commerce platform in its industry, tailoring its 500 Facebook pages into its e-commerce website. This will extend the company’s reach to customers while improving shopping experience. Integrating Facebook and taking advantage of its social networking features increases the potency of e-commerce as students are allowed to do more such as like and share their favorite books to friends. Facebook also opens Barnes & Noble College to its 500 million user base.

“At Barnes & Noble College, we are dedicated to bringing our campus partners ‘what’s next’ in the education retail industry, and our launch of social commerce is just the latest example,” said Max J. Roberts, president of Barnes & Noble College. “Combining our retail excellence with a deep understanding of student and university trends, we are delivering innovative solutions that are transforming our college bookstores and the student experience.”

Social media networks encourages peer to peer or “word of mouth” suggestions, which is very powerful stuff when it comes to persuading a consumers. Mckinsey & Company’s latest survey shows that 20 to 50 percent of purchasing decisions are influence by word of mouth while Colloquy study suggests that 56 percent of young adults are into social networks for product and service recommendations.

“In a university community, students are engaged in campus life through their social networks, including purchasing and recommending products and services,” Roberts added. “In fact, we currently have nearly 250,000 Facebook fans, and the platform has jumped from the fifth to the number one referral site to our campus bookstore websites since the current school year began. We now are taking our social media marketing strategy one step further by integrating the two successful platforms into one social retailing experience.”

While Barnes & Noble is riding into the wave social networks, Yale University, with the belief that next generation jobs will require analytics skills, collaborates with IBM to provide analytics skills to its MBA students to become future business leaders. This initiative is driven by the expansion of social networks and the proliferation of mobile devices, thus, changing the way people interact. These causes massive data generation on a daily basis so it’s important for future business leaders to have the ability to analyze and leverage with these data.

“Analytics skills are no longer just a requirement for the IT professional,” said Rob Ashe, general manager, business analytics, IBM. “The business world continues to become more complex and information is at the center of all its challenges. Analytics has quickly become one of the most important skills required to prepare our business leaders of tomorrow. The Yale School of Management and its dedicated Center for Customer Insights is pioneering the way by exploring new ideas that bring business and technical skills together that will be a significant engine of growth for our economy.”

Big Data is critical to businesses so as to bring data scientists to life. It also caught the attention of the likes of EMC and Jitterbit.  But it’s changing the way we work and communicate, even bringing about new career paths for the future.  Here’s an interesting infographic detailing the role of data scientists, an influential piece of the coming generation’s work force.