A Latin Social Networking Explosion?
May 1, 2007 by Kevin
Filed under Social Media
I fondly remember a few years back where people talked about the “Latin Explosion” when discussing the music industry. This trend gave us the music of Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez… you know come to think of it maybe I don’t think of it that fondly.
Social Networking has begun to turn to a expanding Hispanic youth market, according to an article on yahoo news, 67 percent of Hispanics 18 to 27 use the internet. (Stats by Pew Internet) As we all know this age group is one that is coveted heavily by advertisers.
Numerous sites have been launching that cover the Hispanic market here in the United States as well as in Latin America and Spain. Some of the newer sites include:
ElHood.com- bilingual
Quepasa.com- bilingual
MiGente.com- predominantly in English
Vostu.com- bilingual, considered to be the Latin Facebook
Hi5.com offers a Spanish version of their site and MySpace.com has officially launched a Spanish version of their site as well in the past few weeks.
Businesses that already have websites in Spanish or cater to the Hispanic community should make sure to expand their social networking profile into these emerging sites. ElHood.com right now looks to have the best backbone of the newer sites, with MySpace of course being the latest and biggest monster on the block. However, there has been some early criticism of the new Spanish version of their site.
With the ever growing Hispanic demographic in the United States this is an important market to study and keep an eye on.
In the near future I will review the bilingual sites and explain the features that they offer, with an eye on how businesses can get the most out of them.
Technorati Tags: myspace, HI5, Spanish Language Social Networking, ElHood, Quepasa, MiGente, Vostu, marketing
We invite you to consider us as you continue to research the Latin Social Networking explosion.
Thanks,
Andy
Vostu the Latin Facebook? These guys have never got an Alexa rating better than 500,000. Regardless of what one thinks of Alexa, if your rating is 500,000 or worst, you pretty much suck. The only people who have claimed that Vosu is the latino facebook is Vostu themselves. Don’t buy their cheap PR – judge them by their own merits.
You can check out our Puerto Rico based latin website, Qoodos.
We try to focus on the art and music aspects of our heritage, right now we have featured the Candela Fest, a sister project, brewer of iPod + iTunes campaign “Mi Swing es Tropical”
(I know i found this post really really late) But, first and foremost, Alexa has no relevant meaning to the actual weight of the site. Alexa ranking are only gathered by those people who have the alexa toolbar and use it. so in theory, the alexa ranking could be based on a few hundred thousand people and not the entire internet community. PR is also overrated. I would look more for uniques and page views than anything else.
I have a latin music and Entertainment website as well as a Latin Social Media Network and both are doing great.
People should do more research on ranking and PR before adding thoughts that some people could presume to be factual.
Where is Alexa and page rank coming into play.
It doesn’t in the article, i was referring to another comment posted here.
Rep, it looks like these guys are actually really taking off (better late than never!):
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/vostu.com
Want to welcome all to check us out at savorlatino.com the new Latino Hangout