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Social Media en Español

Did you know that Spanish is the world's second most-spoken language by native speakers after Mandarin Chinese? With 500 million native Spanish-speaking people, Spanish is the third most-used language on the Internet.

How does this important fact affect social media? Many social media sites give the user the option to create an account and navigate their site in Spanish. Facebook, Flickr, My Space, Reddit, Typepad, Wikipedia and Wordpress all offer Spanish as the language to effectively use their site to post, search or share images and ideas with the rest of the world.

Flickr has become such a popular site among Spanish speakers, that flickerinos is the common word being used in electronic conversation to refer to Spanish language users of this site.

The multilingual aspect of the Internet is clear. In addition to Spanish, you can create accounts and surf social media sites in Arabic, Catalan, Dutch, Finnish, French, Japanese, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Swedish, among others.

Closer to home, the National Football League (NFL) and Major League Baseball (MBL) have interactive sites in Spanish that serve the Hispanic community following the two most popular sports in the United States.

The NFL site www.nflatino.com, and the MLB site http://mlb.mlb.com/es/index.jsp?c_id=mlbis, are huge and very easy to use.

A sample below highlights the popularity of Spanish as a social media language.

Wikipedia, http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Portada

Facebook, http://es-es.facebook.com/

Flickr blog in Spanish: http://blog.flickr.net/es

Flickr in Spanish, click on www.flickr.com and select Español at the bottom.

My Space, http://latino.myspace.com

Typepad, http://www.sixapart.com/es/typepad/
Reddit, www.reddit.com and select Español

Alejandro “Alex” Torres

Hispanic PR & Marketing, CWCBlog Team

A Growing Demand for Hispanic Marketing

Between 1990 and 2000, Florida's Hispanic population increased by 70.4 percent from 1.6 million to 2.7 million. Projections from the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research indicate that by 2030, a fourth of the state’s population will be Hispanic, compared to one in six today.

It is no secret that in order to grow their customer base, most industries have tapped into the growing Hispanic market. The demand for culturally appropriate communications is increasing. Cities with historically large and vibrant Hispanic communities such as Miami, New York, Los Angeles and

Chicago are no longer the only markets to consider.

Company executives realize that without marketing to Hispanics, their markets will shrink. The Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia estimated Hispanic buying power at $863.1 billion in 2007. That amount, which is money left after taxes, is expected to reach 1$ trillion in 2010.

 

What does it mean to be Hispanic?

 

The Hispanic community is Florida's largest minority group. National Hispanic Heritage Month extends from September 15 to October 15 and recognizes the culture and traditions of Spanish-speaking residents living in the United States who trace their roots to Spain, Mexico and the Spanish-speaking nations of Central America, South America and the Caribbean. September 15 was chosen as the starting point for the celebration because it is the anniversary of independence of five Latin American countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. In addition, Mexico and Chile celebrated their independence days on September 16 and September 18, respectively.

Next: Reaching the Hispanic Market

 

Alejandro “Alex” Torres

Hispanic PR & Marketing, CWCBlog Team.