Imagine a newspaper that talks–yes, imagine a newspaper that talks to you!
Or imagine a grocery store suggesting what to cook for dinner using only products on sale. Or being part of a radio show without calling in. Or taking part in a presidential campaign by adding an electronic presidential button to your Twitter avatar.  These scenarios are all taking place today in Latin America. How? The short answer: Twitter.

Twitter has become a useful tool in Latin America in areas such as media, retail, and politics. For example, Diario Uno, a newspaper in Mendoza, Argentina, is known as the newspaper that “talks” because it interacts directly with its audience through Twitter.  “Our Twitter followers’ response in seeing that a newspaper reply to them has been enriching and has created a special loyalty to our newspaper,” said Nacho Castro, the person who is in charge of Tweeting for Diario Uno.

Because more than 70% of the Latin American population has access to a cell phone, mobile technology has reached critical mass in the region, which has facilitated the integration of Twitter. According to the research paper “Mobile Internet User Experience in Latin America,” people in Latin America prefer to interact directly with one another rather than through a technology device. But if an application is inviting and entertaining, people are more likely to use it.

One business that has created an inviting and entertaining application that integrates Twitter is Jumbo, a one-stop shopping store with stores in Chile and Argentina. Jumbo’s mobile application allows people to do their shopping on their mobile phones. It uses Twitter to share the latest offerings, recipes, coupons, and new product information. With the help of Twitter, Jumbo’s customers can shop while they ride the bus, the metro, standing in line at the bank–or just about anywhere.

Some radio stations in Latin America are using Twitter to interact with their audiences during their programs. One example is Radio Cooperativa, a radio station in Chile that has built a Twitter application into their programming platform to increase audience participation.  For Radio Cooperativa, Twitter is a venue of live broadcasting in which the broadcaster and the audience can engage in a conversation in real time. “Twitter allows a platform that contains real time information” added Manuel Contreras, Deputy Director Digital Media for CCC (Chilean Communication Company/Cooperativa).

Politicians are also using Twitter to interact with potential voters. In Chile, presidential elections are coming up in December 2009, and presidential candidates have not wasted any time. They have incorporated Twitter into their campaigns, allowing a two-way conversation in which voters and candidates ask questions and exchange opinions.

Maraco Enriquez-Ominami was a late candidate in the race for the presidential seat in Chile. He opened his Twitter account in March 2009; after just six months, he has more than 19,000 followers. (This puts him in second place after opposing candidate Sebastian Piñera, who has had a Twitter account since February 2008 and has 20,000 followers.)  Enriquez-Ominami’s rapid growth in Twitter followers in Chile has made him the most popular Chilean in TweeterWall, a recently defunct website devoted to popularity contests such as these. Enriquez-Ominami also created an electronic button with his picture that supporters can add to their Twitter avatars.

Tweeting in Latino America is different than Tweeting in the United States. Just recently a new Spanish-language microblog called Birddi launched. Twitter just announced that they are creating a Spanish-language version. It will be interesting to see if this will replace or supplement Twitter use in Latin America or not.

As all these examples show, Twitter has become a very important tool in the creation of a more democratic system in Latin America. Audiences now have a voice in making a two-way conversation possible, and the last word can be said by the people.  In addition, Twitter is a natural fit with Latin American culture because of its entertaining and inviting interactive form of communication. It’s still Twitter, but with a Latino flavor!

__________

Rubi Romero provides consulting services as a Digital Media Specialist to non-profits, politicians and media, in the areas of social media and internet content. She specializes in the Hispanic/Latino business market in and outside the United States. Read her blog Vision Latina (http://rubiromero.wordpress.com/) to learn more about current news and trends from a Hispanic/Latino perspective.

The article “Twitter, Latino-Style,” is based upon the chapter “Tweeting in Latino America,” will be included in the book UW Twitter Book to be published in late 2009. For more information about UW Twitter Book, please visit: http://uwtwitterbook.com/about/.

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If you have some time Wednesday evening, you might want to drop in on this summer’s Twitter class, either virtually (we’ll be streaming via uStream.tv) or in person (we’ll be in CMU126).

The students have been tasked with giving five minute presentations on the “best of the best” uses of Twitter in their study area. The “study areas” include airlines, hospitals, food banks, politicians, government, Latin America, news media, food service, visual communication, the military.

The presentations will be shared here http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rubi-s-channel
http://twitter09.wordpress.com/students/final-presentations/

We’ve invited Seattle’s social media community to join us. And we’ll have refreshments.

Twitter account holders, RSVP at http://twtvite.com/3df62z

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On June 3, 2009, Bing was introduced to the public.  Many call it a new search engine, however José Piñero, Microsoft Manager, stated that Bing is a decision engine to help people to make decisions faster, especially in the areas of shopping, travel and health.

Last Tuesday,  Piñero introduced Bing to the Hispanic community here in Seattle through a Spanish News Program (KUNS/UNIVISION). Bing is available in the Spanish language and currently Bing is investing in different languages in all parts of the world.  This multilingual section not only includes the languange, but local feature development that addresses the user habits and the user needs, in other words an engine with cultural competence.

Using the term decision engine when referring to Bing, will distinguished Bing from other search engines that do not offer the same feature as Bing does.  Innovation will continue in this area as more business get that there is a global market out there.  My question is, what would be next?

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According to Digitalmediawire, Facebook suprpassed the US Web traffic for the first time during the month of May.  Facebook had 70.278 million unique visitors vs. MySpace with 70.255 million.

It seems that Facebook is getting a worldwide attention. For example, in Chile, Facebook is the most used social media platform with 4,069,520 users, placing the South American country among the ten countries in the world the use Facebook the most. (Knol, 2008). According to O’Reilly Radar, among the other ten countries are, UK in second place after the United States, Canada in third, Turkey in fouth, Australia, Colombia, France, Norway, and Sweden.

This shows the power of the Facebook community, however this social media platform has not had the same results all over the world. This does not mean that it won’t in the future, but there is always the possibility that other countries will not follow the Facebook path. Only time will tell…

Side Note: Facebook overtook MySpace in worldwide unique visitors in April 2008. (Digitalmediawire, 2009).

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The 2009 UW POCKETMEDIA FILM FESTIVAL: “What do U do at the UW?”

A competition of videos shot on cameras that fit in your pocket! The competition runs from April 17 to May 29, 2009. It’s free and open to all UW faculty, staff, students and alumni. Winners will be screened in a final celebration in June, 2009 (date TBD), at the University of Washington.

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Ace Team, a video game company in Chile in the effort to fight piracy is using the P2P model: “All the games are there to be pirated.  We were not going to be the exception.  Once we saw the game being distributed by BitTorrent, we started to post comments in these pages appealing to those who downloaded the games” Stated a member of Ace Team.  The statement they post on this pages says that they cannot do anything to stop piracy, but if who ever is downloading the game likes to test the game and likes it, they encourage them to buy the game.

This may sound crazy, but it is actually working according to Ace Team. P2P members are posting messages stating that they have bought the game, and that they do it because of Ace Team attitude!

Would this be a new marketing model in the internet for video games, e-books, movies and music?

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Now technology can be used to alert the world about important news, like the latest swine flu pandemic. Veratect, a local company here in Kirkland, Washington are constantly updating/tracking the status worldwide on the swine flu through Twitter.

Twitter/Veratect

“Veratect is tracking the swine influenza event with up-to-the-minute information about potential spread of the disease to aid in early response efforts.” (Veratect)

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Flutter is a microblog like Twitter, however Flutter messages are limited to only 26 characters, yes 26!  Currently Twitter allows you to type up to 140 characters per message, which can be very limited sometimes.

However, in a simplifying world 26 characters make more sense.  Now you read more messages from others since their shorter and will take you less time to read them.

What do you Flutter or Twitter?

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