Buffett Watch

Social media maven Warren Buffett's tweeting advice

Warren Buffett, despite what it says in our attempt at irony in the headline, is no expert on social media.

In fact, he famously doesn't have a computer in his office and does not carry a smartphone. (He does use a computer at home to play online bridge with his friend Bill Gates and others.)

He does have a Twitter account. It was created less than a year ago to help promote an editorial he wrote for Fortune on why he's "bullish" on women.

Today, @WarrenBuffett has 804,000 followers and only five tweets.

That's the joke behind a humorous video from the college Buffett attended more than 60 years ago, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

In it, Buffett ("The Oracle") is seen wearing a bright red jacket (the school's color) while hand-checking a massive pile of NCAA brackets in front of him.

As he happily finds an error, ("Ha! Another loser"), a bright red desk telephone rings.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Harvey Perlman asks about "today's projections."

Buffett: Yesterday's troll market really hurt us. But, cats. Cats are up slightly today. I'd go with cats.

Perlman: Kittens, right?

Buffett: Sure, always kittens.

Perlman says, "Of course, thanks" and taps out his tweet on a phone: "Saw a kitten today. It was cute. Smiley face."

It's one of a series of "Harvey's Perls of Knowledge" videos from the university with a running joke highlighting the chancellor's own cluelessness about technology and pop culture.

(An Omaha World-Herald headline dryly noted that "UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman making less sense than ever on Twitter.")

The video points to a new "Perls of Knowledge" website that asks users to join "Social Squadron Team Alpha+" and hints at future high-profile members to be named in the coming days who have given Perlman social media advice, enabling him to write his own tweets.

In previous videos, Perlman demonstrates he doesn't know what YOLO means (and doesn't like it when he finds out), pointedly declines to do the "Harlem Shake" with the school's mascot and tells students concerned about a zombie apocalypse that it won't happen "on my watch" as he miraculously grows a tough-guy Chuck Norris-style mustache.

His "Dairy Store" video has almost 80,000 views and would be difficult to describe with words.

A link on the new site takes you to the Undergraduate Office of Admissions webpage, which seems to be the point of the whole thing.

The Berkshire-owned Omaha World-Herald quotes Steve Smith, a media relations coordinator for the school, as saying, "UNL is a serious research institute. But I think this shows that we don't always have to take ourselves so seriously."

—By CNBC's Alex Crippen.