The new report from the Pew Hispanic Trust — Latinos Online — shows that 64% of all U.S. Hispanics use the Internet and that foreign-born Latinos have crossed the tipping point with 52% online. As the Hispanic audience grows, they seek new content and increasingly find and regularly visit foreign web sites.
Why is this happening?
“Search engines and social networking are making it easier for [U.S. Hispanic] consumers to find and consume content outside of their home country,” says Rafael Urbina, the CEO of Batanga. “As a result, country-specific brands, such as newspaper domains, are generating a significant portion of their traffic outside of their home market.” Read the rest of this entry »
After reading Felipe Korzenny’s and Lee Vann’s column about Hispanics’ adoption of social media relative to other ethnic demographics, a question came to mind: how will social networks affect the acculturation process among Hispanics? The ability to keep in touch with family and friends from countries-of-origin via email, Skype and online newspapers back home makes it easier than ever. Travel costs are at historic lows. And computer and mobile phone prices fall every year.
Combine these questions with the fact that more communities like Miami and McAllen, Texas, are reaching the tipping point of having a majority of Spanish speakers, and the question about how online media affects acculturation deserves some consideration. Six experts discuss this issue, after which you are invited to leave your comments, links to research and additional questions below. Read the rest of this entry »
The following is a preview to the forthcoming book – The Spanish Net: How to reach and segment Latinos online – from Paramount Books.
Scott Heiferman, now famous for starting MeetUp.com, and Adam Seifer launched Fotolog, a leading photo sharing site, in 2002 as an online community for their friends in Brooklyn, NY to post photos and share them. Instead of building up a domestic fan base, as they thoughts would happen, their user base took them down an unexpected path, according to Yossi Langer, Chief Product Officer, and Arne “Joe” Jokela, Chief Technology Officer of Fotolog.
In 2005, Scott and Adam’s friend, Cora Ronai a journalist from Brazil, visited New York and was impressed by their site. She returned home, wrote an article about Fotolog for O Globo, Brazil’s leading newspaper, and within two months, Brazilian users outnumbered American users. The popularity of Fotolog then spread like wildfire to Argentina and Chile in 2006 and then jumped the Atlantic Ocean over to Spain and Portugal in 2007. That same year, traffic took off in the North of Mexico, especially around Monterrey. Today, Spain is their number one country, in terms of users.
Here’s a great diagram/illustration from David Gray about Language. He says:
Language is more than just communication; it is the primary method by which we do things together. Language is the accumulation of shared meaning – of common ground.
1) One-way communication: message sent
2) Two-way communication: Both sides feel understood
3) Collaboration: Thinking, planning and making decisions
4) Co-creation: Joint activity, making and doing
The following is a preview to the forthcoming book – The Spanish Net: How to reach and segment the 136 million Spanish-speakers online – from Paramount Books.
Miguel “Mike” Ramirez, one of the founders of MedioTiempo.com, tells me that their site was officially “born” on February 7, 2000. When it launched, the U.S. Hispanic market didn’t even enter their mind. They built Medio Tiempo for Mexico. Back then, only two options existed for Mexican-Americans to find news about Mexican soccer: the TV stations Univision and Telemundo. Typically, coverage for teams like Chivas, Pumas or Americas would last only a few minutes during sports shows and possibly be reported by a Colombian newscaster. Today, 500,000 unique visitors (according to Google Analytics) visit MedioTiempo.com from the U.S. on a monthly basis, or about 20% of their total audience, without having invested a cent in promoting their site.
“If you make the site appealing to the Mexican user and give them the feeling of what it’s like to be back in Guadalajara or Mexico City for the game, they will return again and again,” says Mr. Ramirez. “This shows the importance of good content. The user is one click away from leaving your site.” Here’s a sampling of their video content on YouTube….
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=78b3394c-88d4-4fe1-8fd7-c56508f4e676)
