Latino Rebranded: Latinos and Social Media

LATISM embraces how Latinos are using social media in response to recent Arizona laws.

Check out the LATISM site for details on how you can get your ribbon and the Twitter party tonight.

Popularity: 52% [?]

(Please note: this piece is an observation with no judgements made, and only serves as an observation and not a criticism.)

Generally, social media is understood as a conversation between people on the web…as opposed to old media, which is a conversation of a few to the many.

That being said, there are people who use social media as if it were old media, meaning they are using it as a one way announcement platform and not mingling with the public that they serve.  For example, you can have a blog and not have comments enabled.  Yes, you are using new media, but are not utilizing the social aspect.

Let’s look at an popular entertainment personality who it using social media, but lacks what I call the social element – Jorge Ramos.

• On Twitter, he has close to 5,000 followers, but only follows back 9.

• He broadcasts his messages to a large audience, and has no relationship strategy to interact with them.  This can be confirmed by his Twitter feed.

• He may use Twitter as a news filter and monitors only a few people – the two he recently retweeted and the ones he follows.

For those above reasons is why I say Jorge Ramos, is using social media but he is not being social.  Because of who he is he has an impressive following compared to who he follows.  I feel however, that if he added a more social element and actually got more involved with the community he serves his Twitter account may in fact triple in followers, and thus influence.

Note: I friend requested him on Facebook out of curiosity if the same trend is found; some of us are busy and may not have the time to be ‘everywhere’ we’d like to be.

Popularity: 24% [?]

Subtitle: Levels of Truth in Data Representation of Social Networking Sites

The recent data by HitWise that rated social networking sites, ranks Facebook as #1 with 50% traffic, and Twitter as #5 with a mere 1% is a perfect example of a data presented at a certain level of truth, leaving questions at all other levels.

1.	Facebook	50.15%
2.	YouTube	15.21%
3.	MySpace	15.08%
4.	Tagged	1.16%
5.	Twitter	1.14%

Here are the problems:

1. What counts as a visit on Facebook?  (Ex: If you click through 50 profiles, does that count as 50 visits?)
2. Twitter users for the most part use 3rd party applications to manage their accounts such as Seesmic Desktop and Hootsuite, not to mention mobile device access.  Surely, this type of access is not counted as a “visit.”
3. There are other uses for twitter such as search (again 3rd party apps can come into play), or just sit and watch your custom “lists” or groups and use them as a news feed – “visits” here do not account for this invaluable feature.
4. The specialized niches that each network serves (think LinkedIn), is severely undervalued by presenting this data as meaningful.
5. What type of traffic are going to these sites?  What are they doing there?  How is this important to me or my business?

Each point begs pertinent questions – what is the value of other networks?  Are visits the measure of usefulness?  How are the sites used?  Who is visiting these sites and what are they doing?  Nothing outlined by HitWise, comes close to providing answers.

The web is no different than any terrain – the more you know, the better you can use it to your advantage.  Thinking through what is presented here, we come to important conclusions – this is called being media literate – and can leverage the information in our favor.

Did you initially interpret the data as I did…that is, Facebook rules?

(In a little while, I’ll be posting another piece that uses the same data above. However, the discussion is about why you should not chase traffic, but make it come to you.)

Popularity: 19% [?]

Subtitle:  Half the tweets on Twitter are in English

A study done by Semiocast (.pdf), reveled language usage on Twitter over a period of 48 hours in February, 2010.

The study found that most language used was English at 50% from English speaking countries and non-native English speaking users.

Other languages that were tallied – Japanese (14%), Portugese (9%), Malay (6%) – can be attributed directly to international outreach or social media popularity within that region.

Spanish came in 5th at 4% mostly from Spanish users who are in the US.  It’s my belief that this reflects the preference of Hispanic social media users of English as their primary communication language and reflects the young, acculturating traits of Hispanics online. My only wonder if there’s any public usage stats on Twitter’s Spanish translation page.

The rest of the 17% was a combination of various languages each accounting for no more than 2%

Popularity: 20% [?]

With the announcement of Google Buzz, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Comments feature in blogs.  I don’t want to say that Buzz is necessarily bad for blogs, but it can de-augment a very powerful pillar of blogging – the Comments section.

Let me back up a little.

In October, I talked about the importance of publishing your content on a blog that you own versus a social media site like Facebook or Twitter.  I subtitled the post as “Centralized Me,” to build on the concept of concentrating your content to one main platform.

The Comment’s section of a blog is the site’s social component, for without it a blog is only a new media site with a one way conversation void of reader interaction.

Google Buzz, in essence does to your blog’s comments what other social media sites does to your content – spreads it far and wide.  If readers use Buzz the exposure of your blog will be multiplied, which is every blogger’s dream.  But I have to ask, will those who use Buzz also comment on your blog?

Latino Rebranded integrates a button called TweetMeme and if you look, more people Tweet posts than actually comment.  On Facebook, my followers comment or “like” my blog posts, as well as Networked Blogs – a Facebook application that delivers new posts to people’s inbox and utilizes an RSS feed as well.   Now Buzz, can be added to the list.  (I just had the thought that an opportunity exists for a program to pool together all these outside conversations and dump them into one spot – the Comment section.  Maybe it already exists?)

Taking all of the above into consideration, the ‘push-button’ interaction that they all offer will subtly deter comments because in the mind of the reader they already have commented – in the form a tweet, a buzz or a ‘like’.

I’m not saying to not use any of these services, because they are great tools that leverage your blog’s exposure – and that’s what you want!  But, with the awareness of conversations happening outside your Comment section you can start thinking of ways to harness them for the benefit of your blog.

Popularity: 100% [?]

Subtitle: WYB – Watch Your Back in social media!!!

As netizens connect and grow, so do more unsavory individuals look to take advantage of those communications.

Having a background in technology, I’ve seen many cases of users unknowingly causing computer problems which easily could of been prevented if they new more about the computer environment.

With this in mind, imagine what can happen to an individual who unknowing falls prey to a computer virus or a phishing attempt, that could of been prevented if the knowledge of the characteristics of such attacks could of been recognized.

Social Media Literacy (SML), permits us to identify such threats.

SML goes beyond the knowledge of  pushing your content through different social media channels; it involves the critique of received media.  If media literacy broadly applies to digital media,  then SML would be specific to social media platforms.

Tips

Here are some suggestions for Twitter:

- If you see many of your friends sharing the same strange new Twitter icon, or tweeting the same strange message, it’s probably a hoax, or they’ve already fell victim to one.

- Be weary of tweets that contain news or calls to action, without having links.  This may be a prank/hoax, and the joke may be on you.

Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!

- If tweet contains all CAPS or multiple symbols, take heed!

- “Think before you click.”  Is this too good to be true?  Do you know the user?

- Mouseover the link and make sure you can verify the link (enable status bar in most web browsers).  If you can’t see it, or the link looks like bad news (IP number, instead of URL), the WYB!

- Does the persons tweets have a lot of links in many of them?  They have an incessant need to get you somewhere.

I can count on one hand how many times I’ve used the ‘block’ feature on Twitter.  This is because, I spend so much time on the internet that I’ve developed a heightened awareness of what looks right and what looks suspect, so I don’t spend too much time blocking people from my feed…I just unfriend them.

If someone is trying to take advantage of others, and you want to take the extra step then, submit their name to Twitter Help for investigation.

Has anyone experienced, or have more suggestions for Twitter or any other site?

Popularity: 34% [?]

Subtitle:  Hispanic Media Myths

A great article…it even seems to have some picante to it as it’s spiced up with some humor and witty lines.

If you have some image in your head of a poor campesino looking confusedly at a computer screen, delete it. Replace that with an image of Perez Hilton tweeting and blogging and instant-messaging all day. In fact, Latinos far outpace Anglos in online and mobile usage. Of all wireless users in the U.S., 39% of U.S.-Hispanics use their mobile devices to read the news, in comparison to just 17% of non-Hispanics.

Note the quick change to ‘Latino’ from ‘Hispanic’ when talking about online/mobile usage.  I almost got excited about that, but then noted that Hispanic and Latino are used interchangeably throughout the piece.  It’s still a great read.

Popularity: 9% [?]

#LatISM Twitter party

This pic is awesome.  Special thnaks to @tiabel (her blog). And if want to know how to throw a great #latism Twitter party then follow these 10 tips.

Click on the pic to view some of the leaders that are bringing you these great parties giveaways and networking opportunities, and the Latinos In Social Media ‘Heritage Tour’ : @anarc @urbanjibaro @latism @tiabel @nancyperez and yours truly – @louispagan.

It is great to see the creativeness and passion that fellow Latinos have for social media and their culture.

I love this so much, that over on the Facebook group, I’ve made it into a discussion thread. Go there to see more examples of what Latinos are doing with #latism.

How an where do you use/find #latism? Here are two places that I found:

http://twitpic.com/d00xg @tibel
http://blip.fm/~bafo7 @LatinJazzMecca

If you stare at the twitpic and listen to blip at the same time you get real Chillaxed!

What about you?

Popularity: 7% [?]

Out of the top 10 ReTweeted words used on Twitter,’please’and ‘retweet’ - “…please, retweet!” – comes in second and third respectively.

Asking around, others shared my feeling that it sounds cheesy and cheap to ask for your Tweet to be ReTweeted.  However, the math proves this works – and you can’t argue with math.

But why does this work?  Social media is based on people participating with the intention of sharing and helping.  “Please, retweet”, works because of the empathy we have for one another.

Popularity: 3% [?]