Batanga has acquisired MetroFlog and partner sites, MetroBlog and MetroPostales. On the heels of acquiring two leading online media companies, Adfunky and I-Network, Batanga, Inc., has now added all three premium Hispanic-focused properties to its roster of owned and operated websites. The latest acquisition increases the company’s audience by over six million unique visitors a month.

MetroFlog.com is a social media platform that allows users to create individual spaces where they upload personal photos and share them among all other users. To date, MetroFlog users have published over twenty million photographs, uploading an additional sixty thousand photos daily. The photo blogs serve as catalyst for comments, guest signatures, making friends, and are at the core of the social experience on MetroFlog.com.

Read More: http://hispanicize.com/blog/batanga-acquires-hispanic-social-network-metroflog?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

(Source: detour.co)

Based on the website Twittercounter the following are the top 10 followed Latino figures and accounts in entertainment:

• Shakira (@shakira) — 7,903,558 followers
• Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) — 6,964,434 followers
• Twitter en español (@twitter_es) — 6,363,445 followers
• demetria lovato (@ddlovato) — 4,127,958 followers
• Perez Hilton (@PerezHilton) — 3,746,475 followers
• Ricky Martin (@ricky_martin) — 3,628,709 followers
• JUANES (@juanes) — 2,946,115 followers
• Alejandro Sanz (@AlejandroSanz) — 2,858,740 followers
• Jennifer Lopez (@JLo) — 2,547,808 followers
• Rene Perez Joglar (@Calle13Oficial) — 2,223,333 followers

Since some of you might not consider some of the above mentioned celebrities to be Latino figures in the entertainment industry, below I have added a few more to complete the list:

• Paulina Rubio (@paurubio) — 2,175,227 followers
• Eva Longoria (@EvaLongoria) — 2,171,514 followers
• Thalia (@thalia) — 2,053,090 followers

It’s fine and dandy to have millions and millions of followers, but what’s important in social media is the impact that you have on the people that are following you, or even the ones that just come across your tweet. So in my opinion…start engaging! That is what’s going to get you far. Start conversations with your followers and with people on the Twitterverse.

Chipotle Menu To Fess Up To Bacon Usage Because Of Tweets

(via @LatinoVoices)

Chipotle has always advised on its website that vegetarian and vegan customers should avoid its pinto beans. The beans are cooked with “a small amount of bacon,” unlike the Mexican chain’s black beans, which are vegan. But in-store menus do not indicate the porkiness of the pinto, and Chipotle’s burrito assemblers are instructed to inform customers of the bacon inclusion only if they order a burrito without other meat.

This policy meant that at least one regular Chipotle eater, Maxim senior editor Seth Porges, unwittingly ate lots of bacon over the past several years. Porges does not eat pork, as he said in a letter to Chipotle, “for religious and cultural reasons,” and so was shocked to discover, after years of eating Chipotle’s pinto beans, that it contained bacon. Consumerist reports that Porges tweeted about the shocking discovery, and also emailed Chipotle CEO Steve Ells, to complain. Ells responded immediately. He told Porges that the chain would change its menu to include a mention of the bacon in its pinto beans.

Read Full Story and See the Tweets that Made a Difference: Chipotle Menu To Fees Up To Bacon Usage of Tweets

Hace poco más de cinco años, Twitter se conviritió en una máquina para simplificar hasta los mas profundos pensamientos  de sus usuarios en 140 caracteres. El aumento de cuentas abiertas en esta red social se ha esparcido como polvora alrededor del mundo con más de 200 millones de usuarios utilizando este servicio para compartir noticias, ideas, comentarios y críticas. 

Por primera vez en la historia de la humanidad los consumidores de información tienen la oportunidad de ser los propios productores de ésta a través de las herramientas en las redes sociales.  Y también por primera vez en la historia los latinos en línea son percibidos en los medios  establecidos de Estados Unidos como sus iguales.

“Me encanta conversar en línea sobre los latinos en EE.UU. porque creo que hemos estamos relegados de los medios dominantes en el país”, dijo el Tuitero de Filadelfia Eric Cortes (@navaja1cortes), director de mercadeo y promoción de Telemundo en esta ciudad.

 Cortes piensa que esta interacción se puede utilizar como una ventaja para tener presencia en las redes sociales, y encontrar usuarios con intereses comunes y un fin productivo.

Este hispano es un fiel seguidor en Twitter del hashtag #LATISM, el símbolo que canaliza a tuiteros hispanos en una sola conversación. 

La organización Latinos in Social Media (LATISM) surgió gracias a la creciente participación virtual de usuarios hispanos, perdidos entre los mensajes de la otra gran mayoría de personas. 

Desde su creación en el 2009, los miembros registrados han aumentado,  según su base de datos, a 134.000 usuarios subscritos entre las diferentes plataformas con las que cuenta LATISM.

La participación viene de latinos en cualquier parte del mundo y la idea es que la voz de los hispanos sea escuchada.

Leer Artículo: “Tuiteros latinos están cambiando el mundo”
Leer Artículo en Inglés: Latinos Changing the World Through Twitter?

(via @HuffingtonPost)

While still lacking sufficient resources, Hispanics register serious advances in educations and business. This year, 32.2 million Hispanics, or 63% of the entire Hispanic population, are online. And while this percentage still pales when compared to that of other groups, according to a report by IAB Hispanic Research Working Group, the rate of growth of online activity among Latinos expected between now and 2015 — 35% — is four times faster than that of non-Hispanic Whites.

Latinos are here to stay. That was the call of hundreds of thousands who, in 2006 and 2007, marched all across the nation asking for immigration reform: ‘Aquí estamos y no nos vamos,’ they chanted. As if they were saying, “We are here. Deal with us. Know us.”

Latinos are united by common language, history and culture, as well as separated by vast differences. We are not a homogeneous group. We come here from México, El Salvador, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Ecuador… even from Argentina, my native country. Our interests and needs differ from Los Angeles to New York, from Miami to Chicago. But we are here to stay.

We are differentiated by age: young Latinos who speak more English than their parents tend to use newer technologies and social media, have habits and desires that parallel those of non-Latino youth; older Latinos who speak only Spanish hold onto more beliefs and values from their home countries. We are of course differentiated as well by income and education. Many of us are in desperate need of critical information, guidance, community referrals on immigration regulations, jobs, health insurance and education. And across each of these divides the question of immigration is omnipresent. Many Latinos in this country have a close relative or friend who is an undocumented immigrant, and most Latinos can trace their roots to an immigrant forefather or mother.

Read Full Article: We’re Here and We’re Not Leaving

The Latino Sound of Digital Music

(via @clickz)

Spotify, the Swedish online music-on-demand service, has teamed up with Warner Music Group to launch the site in the U.S. With over 10 million European subscribers and followers, including celebrities such as Mark Zuckerberg and Demi Moore, Spotify could definitely benefit from targeting Latinos in order to develop its U.S. presence.

Latinos are listening to more and more music. If you take a look at CD purchases, Latinos over-index, and this is even higher among lower acculturated Hispanics. Paradoxically, they show the same passion about digital music. As I discussed in previous posts, Latinos are embracing and leading adoption of new technologies such as mobile and social media. Ubiquity has become the new norm and this is true with music too. Latinos want to access their favorite artists and songs everywhere, all the time, and in every format possible.

The Digital Shift

Latinos are leading the shift to listening to music online and on computers at a faster pace than the general population. Hispanics are downloading and streaming music with a tendency to use many platforms. Part of the reason is that they first try to find the song for free and if that’s not the case, then they buy it online.

Among Hispanics, the shift to mobile is greater than the general market. On Pandora, Hispanics skew 72 percent mobile and 28 percent web, and mobile is responsible for 83 percent of Hispanic listening hours, reaffirming that ubiquity is the new norm to music. Latinos over-index in all aspects of music on mobile as you can see on the chart below.

The Battle for Listeners

Although Latinos use many platforms like Rhapsody, Napster, Last.fm, etc., there are two players that have been growing in terms of preference: Pandora and Batanga.

Batanga, a predominantly Hispanic music platform, grew dramatically in 2010. Unique visitors grew by 65 percent, listening hours grew by 50 percent, and the listening time grew to two and a half hours. There are over 250,000 daily interactions on the mobile app and users shared over 60,000 custom radio stations on Facebook in the last month.

Music Genres

Acculturation and language have an important impact on preferences in terms of genres. Here are some findings:

• Latinos (still) love Latin music. This genre continues to lead preferences. From Mexican regional to Latin ballads followed by Latin rock, Latin jazz, Latin rap, and reggaeton.
• Latinos don’t just listen to Latin music: rap/hip hop, R&B, and alternative rock are growing among Hispanics too. In the case of reggae, the preference is even higher than for non-Hispanics.
• Radio listening in Spanish is growing among English-dominant Latinos: Bicultural young adults are reconnecting to their original culture by listening to Spanish music and Latin genres.
• Non-Hispanics are also turning to Latin music: Pandora has more than half a million registered users that are not Hispanic, yet listen to Latin music. Similarly, Batanga has 834,000 non-Hispanic unique visitors.

Latinos represent a great opportunity for Spotify to develop its U.S. presence. But even if you are not Spotify, music represents a great opportunity for reaching Latinos in the digital space.

Read More: The Latino Sound of Digital Music

How Will Personal-Feedback Loops Affect the Hispanic Population?

Alicia Morga wants to know how you’re feeling.

The founder and CEO of Refleta.com isn’t just making small talk. Her company’s iPhone app, gottaFeeling, prompts users to track their emotions, which they can share via social networks.

However, gottaFeeling is more than some narcissistic toy that panders to our national obsession with sharing every thought with our virtual friends. The app has a purpose, which is to help people recognize their unconscious habits. It utilizes an old idea that technology has revitalized and that many experts believe is “a profoundly effective tool for changing behavior.”

The tool in question is the personal-feedback loop, and while the concept is not the domain of any one ethnicity or race, it has potentially enormous consequences for the Latino community.

In essence, personal-feedback loops give people contextualized information about their actions, often in real time. An example is a baseball player who studies tape of his swing, makes adjustments, studies the tape of his new swing, makes more adjustments, and so on, forming a loop. The theory is that once individuals see the hidden patterns in their behaviors, they will be better prepared to do something about it.

The Hispanic community has long been responsive to societal-feedback loops. For example, a Northwestern University study theorized that even though overt discrimination has been outlawed, persistent “institutional” feedback loops maintain and reproduce early advantages for white people that were established, making socioeconomic progress for Latinos more difficult.

But it is the personal-feedback loop, rather than the cultural version, that has the most potential to help Latinos make dramatic changes today. The reason, as it is for so many aspects of our lives, is technology.

This may seem odd, as Hispanics have traditionally lagged behind other ethnic groups when it comes to the adoption of technology. But that is changing, as Latinos have recently been shown to be over-indexing in social media technology adaption.

For example, Latinos are now more likely than other groups to use the advanced functions on their smart phones. This is undoubtedly because Hispanics are younger (and one assumes, much hipper) than the general population. As such, Hispanics may be quite receptive to apps like Morga’s gottaFeeling, or to other technologies that employ personal-feedback loops.

Morga understands this, which is why her app is available in both English and Spanish. Regardless of which language users employ, gottaFeeling fans quickly create a database of their moods, which helps them pinpoint bad habits that they may not have recognized. The app records data and relays it to users, who then input more data and gain more insights, creating a loop.

“Tracking your emotions is very helpful in changing behavior,” Morga says. “Data helps people to be more aware.”

This drive to gain self-awareness may provide a golden opportunity for entrepreneurs and marketers, because Latinos are now America’s largest ethnic minority. More important, the Hispanic community has a number of challenges that personal-feedback loops can alleviate.

Read Full Article: How Will Personal-Feedback Loops Affect the Hispanic Population?

Lowe’s launches website in Spanish

New Mexico Business Weekly

Lowe’s has launched a Spanish language website.

Lowe’s Cos. Inc. has launched a Spanish-language version of Lowes.com to reach Hispanic customers. Customers can access the site at lowes.com/espanol.

“Providing a Spanish-language option on Lowes.com is a natural next step as our website develops to provide improved customer service,” says Gihad Jawhar, vice president at Lowes.com.

The site offers online shopping and how-to articles, in Spanish. Video content is slated to follow in September.

Source: New Mexico Business Weekly

The Multicultural World of Social Media Marketing

Social media is now ubiquitous. Usage of blogs, social networks, and video sharing sites is increasing rapidly and millions of people now look to social media websites as their primary source of news, opinion, and entertainment. As we witness this dramatic shift from traditional to social media, we believe it’s important to examine its cultural dimensions—that is, who is driving this shift, what are the cultural factors behind it, and what are the implications for marketers seeking to reach specific ethnic/cultural groups via social media?

We recently conducted an analysis of newly collected data to examine the patterns of social media behaviors of different ethnic/cultural groups in the US. The data comes from the Florida State University Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication with the support of DMS Research from a national online sample of nearly 2,500 people with approximately 500 cases in each of the following cultural groups: Hispanics who prefer English, Hispanics who prefer Spanish, Non-Hispanic Whites, African Americans, and Asians in the United States.

Ethnic minorities visit social networking sites more frequently than non-Hispanic Whites

We aggregated information to find out what ethnic/cultural groups are more likely to visit social networking sites. We found broad diversity in social media behaviors among different ethnic/cultural groups and that emerging minorities visit social networking sites more frequently than non-Hispanic whites.

We then broke out the data for leading social networks, MySpace and Facebook, to see if there are any groups leading usage of the most popular social networking sites—again, minorities lead the way, with English Preferring Hispanics being twice as likely to visit MySpace regularly than Non-Hispanic Whites. The relative importance of emerging minorities as compared with the traditional majority points to a major shift in social influence.

Demographics, culture and market factors drive ethnic minorities to social networks

This data is interesting, but in order for these findings to be useful and actionable for us as marketers, we need to determine the reason for the strong representation of ethnic minorities on social networking sites and how to best engage with this audience. We believe that there is a mix of cultural, demographic and market factors that make social media particularly appealing to emerging minorities.

Demographically, ethnic minorities are younger than non-Hispanic Whites. It’s no secret that younger people in general are more likely to adopt new technologies, particularly technologies that enable communication and provide social connectivity. This age gap between minorities and non-Hispanics only partially explains the gap in social media involvement.

Read More: The Multicultural World of Social Media Marketing

Latinos in Social Media [LATISM] Releases Report of Its

2011 Latino Blogosphere Survey

WASHINGTON, DC – June 9, 2011 – Latinos in Social Media [LATISM], the first and largest non-profit organization to engage, organize, train and promote Latinos and Latinas in the social media arena, today has released the results to its 2011 Latino Blogosphere Survey, the second in a series of surveys aiming to explore the state of online and social media usage among Latinos. The survey results were first unveiled during the Latinos in Social Media panel conducted by LATISM at the 2011 BlogWorld and New Media Expo.

Despite the results of the 2010 Census, there’s little to no information available in regards to “influentials” in the Latino Blogging world. After last year’s groundbreaking LATISM Latina Blogger Survey, LATISM set about to redefine the Latino Blogosphere.

“We were astounded by the overwhelming response by over 12,000 bloggers. The report offers conclusive evidence about Latino/a bloggers as to what motivates them and the issues they care about,” said Ana Roca-Castro, Founder and Chair of LATISM. “These findings will prove to be eye-opening to brands, organizations and industry-followers alike as they try to reach one of the most powerful groups online.”

Key Findings include:

• 61% use social media for personal purposes, followed by business, self promotion and for doing social good
• The top three blogging topics are Latino Issues (45%), followed by Social Good and Education
• The mayority (48%) prefer to shop online
• Price is the biggest driver at the time of purchase
• Their reasons for blogging vary by individual, but a common thread is their deep connection to their community and their faith in the power of blogging as a tool for change
• The overwhelming majority described Education as the top priority Latino issue, followed by Health and Jobs

Read More and See the Full Report: http://blog.latism.org/latism-2011-blogosphere-survey-results/