Not surprisingly, the research also found that the younger the respondent, the more reliant that person was on online sources.

Key demographic differences:

• Respondents with household incomes of $100K or more receive considerably more news and information from online sources (23.1% vs. 14.6% for the general population).
• College grads report using online sources more frequently (20.0%).
• Adults ages 18-34 report the highest reliance on online sources (22.2%).
• Hispanics are more likely to prefer online sources (21.0%).

“The data showing an increase in online use and drop in daily newspaper consumption echoes what we’re hearing from consumers and media partners,” according to the research company. “Consumers want more of their information online.”

Other survey findings:

• College grads are more likely to trust online news (giving online a 6.3 rating vs. the 5.7 rating by the general population), and are less likely to trust TV news (giving TV a 6.1 rating vs. the 6.5 rating by the general population).
• Respondents with annual household incomes of $100K and above trust online sources considerably more than the general population (giving online a 6.5 rating, compared with the 5.7 rating by the general population).
• Higher-income respondents also view daily newspapers as more credible (6.8 vs. the 6.3 overall rating).

About the survey:  The survey was conducted with 1,000 US adults, ages 18+. It was conducted by phone September 10-13, 2009. ARAnet.

And, LATISM (Latinos in Social Media), a non-profit organization that groups Latinos who actively participate online, has performed an invaluable survey of over 900 Latina bloggers and has shared these incredible insights with all of us.

Thank you, LATISM!!!

Perhaps reflecting the makeup of the larger Latino population, the great majority of participants were born in Mexico and the US

This is an excerpt from the LATISM survey on Latina bloggers (July 2010):

The world has certainly changed a lot since our “abuelitas” (grandmas) used to keep a secret dairy. Today’s Latinas are open-minded, opinionated and love to share their innermost  thoughts online… in two different languages!

At the same time, while they have shed certain traditions, these independent heads of households have managed to tap into the gregarious aspect of our culture: the sense of community,  which earned high marks as a main motivator to start posting.

They have succeeded at planting themselves right at the epicenter of merging worlds: between tradition and modernity, between English and Spanish, between American and Latino cultures.

The intrinsic characteristics of blogging, where the private becomes public and communities rally together around common interests, make it the perfect platform for the Latina Passion.

• The number of blogueras has been climbing steadily for the past 10 years but the numbers really skyrocketed last year: 63% started blogging in 2009 and it’s expected to continue climbing.
• Most feel being a Latina has helped them find sponsorships and readers but in general feel they get less opportunities compared to non-Latinas
  • Young: The largest group is between 30 and 39
  • Mothers: 83% has between 2 and 4 kids
  • Heads of household:  70% is either single, divorced or separated
• Commitment:
  • 75% blog two or more times a week
  • 77% have invested in their own domain
• 98% plus are active in social media
• A surprising 72% blog primarily in English
• Mobile:
  • 81% use their phone to tweet
  • 90% use it for FB
  • 93% use apps

You can access the full report here

Source: LATISM

BOONTON, N.J., June 28 — Over the next five years, US Hispanic communities will spend $257 billion on telecommunications services, accounting for 17 percent of all

The US Latino market tends to over-index in mobile content and US Hispanics are accessing the Internet through more and varied devices than non-Hispanics. Are you monitoring what they say about their Telecom services?

residential telecom expenditures, according to a new market research study from The Insight Research Corporation. Early analysis of Census 2010 data suggests that Hispanics will surpass the 50 million mark and that they will command over $1 trillion in buying power. Hispanics are the youngest race/ethnicity segment and, more importantly, have the largest percentage of people under the age of 18, a market demographic that the study says will be crucial to the survival of telecommunications providers over the next five years.

Insight Research’s market analysis study, “US Hispanic Use of Telecommunications Services 2010-2015,” takes a close look at the purchasing habits and telecommunications usage patterns of the Hispanic segment of the US population, as well as other ethnic communities in the US. The study emphasizes that the US Latino market tends to over-index in mobile content and also notes that US Hispanics are accessing the Internet through more and varied devices than non-Hispanics.

“If the future of mobile carriers depends on their getting consumers to buy their data plans, then the US Hispanic community is right in the sweet spot, and will be receiving increasing attention from both wireline and wireless carriers’ marketing departments,” says Robert Rosenberg, Insight Research. “Our study demonstrates that Hispanics are one of the most social groups online, and given the youth-orientated demographic of the US Hispanic community, they become a prime target for the newer 3G and 4G cellular services,” Rosenberg concluded.

“US Hispanic Use of Telecommunication Services 2010-2015″ examines spending and usage patterns of US Hispanics for wireline, cellular, and pre-paid cellular services, and compares these spending patterns to those of the general population aswell as other minority segments, including Asian-Americans and African-Americans.

An excerpt of this Hispanic market research report, table of contents, and ordering information are online at www.insight-corp.com/reports/hisp10.asp .

NEWS SOURCE: Insight Research Corporation

"About a third of the country is going to be of Latino heritage by 2050 and we thought it was time to launch a site with more of a focus," said Michael Clemente, Fox News' senior vice president of news editorial.

Fox News plans to launch this fall a website aimed at a Latino audience as it seeks to build its coverage and links with one of the fastest-growing U.S. communities.

Fox News, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, said on Wednesday the new site FOX News Latino (www.FoxNewsLatino.com) will provide original news and features focused exclusively on the Latino community.

The U.S. Latino population is one of the fastest growing, accounting for around 15.4 percent of the population in 2008, up from 12.5 percent in 2000, according to Pew Research. As that population grows, marketers are spending more of their advertising dollars with Hispanic media outlets.

“About a third of the country is going to be of Latino heritage by 2050 and we thought it was time to launch a site with more of a focus,” said Michael Clemente, Fox News’ senior vice president of news editorial.

But Clemente said it was unlikely Fox News will launch a news television channel focused on the Latino community.

“It’s not on the drawing board. There’s just too much to be had among the 700 cable channel universe right now.”

The new website will feature videos and other content in both Spanish and English with reports from the United States as well as South and Central America, and the West Indies, among other regions.

Some content from the site will appear on FoxNews.com’s “Strategy Room,” the political, entertainment and lifestyle talk show streamed live on the Web every weekday.

Fox News is the most-watched cable news channel in the United States and in the last year has expanded its lead over rivals like CNN, which is owned by Time Warner Inc and MSNBC, a unit of NBC Universal which owned by General Electric Co.

Clemente said he sees little risk that a Latino audience would avoid a website backed by Fox News because of the cable TV network’s conservative pundits, whose views on issues like immigration can be at odds with the Latino community.

“I don’t think there’ll be conflict,” he said. “We will do what we always do on the news side which is to be very fair and balanced on all sides of the issue in our reporting.”

News Corp shares closed 36 cents to $13.39 on Nasdaq.

Source: Reuters

Companies face a very real need not just to acknowledge the impact of unstructured social media on brand and product perception, but to understand and filter it sensibly, and to integrate it with structured customer data and get it into the hands of the right people to make it actionable.

But the sheer volume of the customer choir in the Web 2.0 age often leaves companies scrambling to keep up. Publishing is now in the hands of the public, who have a vexing tendency to post with blunt honesty in unstructured formats via blogs, tweets, e-mails and forums about products and services that delight or disappoint them. And those opinions hold weight. A 2007 study by Jupiter Research (since acquired by Forrester), called “Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape,” found that 30 percent of frequent social networkers trust their peers’ opinions when making a major purchase decision, compared to the 10 percent who trust advertisements.

As Andreas Wiegend, former chief scientist of Amazon.com, predicted in a blog post for the Monitor Talent Group, “In 2009, more data will be generated by individuals than in the entire history of mankind through 2008.” Companies face a very real need not just to acknowledge the impact of unstructured social media on brand and product perception, but to understand and filter it sensibly, and to integrate it with structured customer data and get it into the hands of the right people to make it actionable.

For many companies, the burgeoning text analytics approach of sentiment analysis is becoming a critical component of their overall strategy, giving them a much-needed assist to stay responsive to customers, market opportunities and trends.

What is it?

In his white paper “Text Analytics 2009,” Seth Grimes, analytics strategist at Alta Plana, describes text analytics as “the software and the transformational steps that discover business value in ‘unstructured’ text.”

There’s special business value in discerning opinion, sentiment and subjectivity—the “voice of the customer”—in text as varied as blogs, forum postings, articles, e-mail and survey responses. That field of “customer experience analysis” applies sentiment analysis and other techniques to understand and help predict consumer behavior via text analysis coupled with analysis of customer transactions, profiles and demographics.

Vendors generally use a combination of statistical analysis of wordfrequency and co-occurrences with linguistics (involving lexicons, dictionaries and language rules) in an algorithmic approach to understanding exactly what the consumer is saying. Grimes says, “The narrower you can frame the problem and the data you collect, the better, because you can then adjust your approach to match specific business requirements and information sources.”

The technological challenges are not for the faint-hearted or the linguistically timid. Suresh Vittal, analyst at Forrester, says, “For a long time, text analytics was a technology in search of a business need. Now, thanks to social media, the need is there; the question is whether the technology can ramp up fast enough to be commercial.” Early adoption by government agencies, which sought to apply text mining to mountains of classified documents, is giving way to more mainstream commercial demand from industries for whom customer perception is critical: hospitality, consumer brands and high-tech, among them.

Classifying the messy middle

Ours is a world in which online consumer reviews of hotels that might include the phrase “the lobby is baaaaad!” meant in a positive way, or a review of a holiday toy saying, “I would give this to all the children in my life, if I were Scrooge,” meant to disparage. Throw in slang, language evolution and socio-cultural gradations in word use, and you have a mammoth challenge for accurate computational treatment of opinion.

Levy says accuracy remains a challenge in the industry. “The sentiment side is good at the two poles, positive and negative. But the neutrals are difficult. If you give four people in a room 100 neutral opinions and ask them to classify, even they will only agree 55 to 60 percent of the time.”

The level of granularity can also be important. If sentiment is assigned at a document level—that is, each tweet or blog post is assigned a positive, neutral or negative sentiment—how does the hypothetical tweet “I love Marriott’s bathrooms but the beds are lumpy” get classified? A chief executive officer cautions, “Ratings need to be assigned on a subject level at a minimum; a solution that assigns them at a document level is going to miss something.”

Whose opinion is it?

Even if a sentiment analysis tool were always accurate, the opinions don’t necessarily carry equal weight.  Dell has an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 online conversations about its brand each day, which span the spectrum of positive to negative; the company needs to understand whose opinion actually has the power to move brand perception, and keep close tabs on those. Sentiment analysis needs to be connected to social metrics and influence analysis to make sense.

Levy agrees, saying companies understand that listening to social media is important but now need help in filtering. “There is no longer the notion that trusted information only comes from The New York Times,” he says. “Once you get a handle on who is influencing your brand, that becomes actionable.” Influence analysis, analyzing digital breadcrumbs to see which individuals have the highest credibility and widest reach, should be a part of the overall text analytics strategy. By knowing in advance who the influencers are for your brand, you’ll be better prepared to manage crisis and opportunity effectively, reaching out to 20 key contacts instead of 10,000 questionable ones.

Taking sentiment out of the silo

There’s widespread agreement among vendors and analysts that text analysis is only as valuable as the actions it prompts. In a Forrester report from February 2009, called “Obstacles To Customer Experience Success,” a survey of 90 customer experience decision-makers from large North American firms found that 89 percent said that customer experience would be either very important or critical to their 2009 efforts, but a lack of cooperation across organizations remains a major obstacle.

When it comes to sentiment analysis, different functions are listening for different answers. A customer service manager needs insight into customer experience, a product manager wants to hear complaints or praise for features as well as product design ideas, and brand managers may be looking for competitive intelligence.

For customers of online monitoring solutions, acting on the feed of information is the hardest part of the equation. You must have an environment where people are culturally attuned to action.

The challenge to the enterprise is to combine analysis of what is being said, by whom, with more structured customer intelligence data  in order to develop a robust customer engagement strategy. Forrester’s Vittal says that to break sentiment analysis out of the silo, “The platforms must be open and integratable. Customer intelligence data is still siloed, and there is a complexity gap that must be overcome.”

Companies should combine unstructured data from opinions about their brands and products, posted on social media and other traditional online sites, with public opinion as measured through structured survey research, to paint a richer picture of consumers’ emotions and decision factors.

Getting started

For companies that are just getting started with sentiment analysis, the first step is to listen to what’s being said, analyze the information and identify possible root causes behind it—a company can truly begin to capitalize on the promise of text analytics- and use it as input to their marketing strategy.

Most of us, marketers, are trying to engage the Millennials or Gen Y. Also, most marketers are still leery of Gen Y marketing techniques. Therefore, we need to keep understanding who they are, what they do, what they like and what they dislike. Here is a brief overview of the Millennials or Gen Y.

Listen to them online 24/7 using Multicultural Market Intelligence Tools

• Gen Y believes in the power of WE and is all-inclusive.
• Gen Y is multicultural and 34% of Millennials are Hispanics.
• Gen Y believes that customized options help define personal style.
• Gen Y is hyper-connected.
• Gen Y is married to mass media and goes online more than any other generation.
• Gen Y uses cellphones as an extension of their own body.
• The average Gen Y’er spends an average of 33 hours on social networks, 31 hours on email, and sends over 700 texts, every month.
• Their status updates or messages to friends reach hundreds, and because of its instant repetition, they reach greater audiences almost instantly.
• Gen Y loves communication tools – especially instant messages.
• Gen Y is interested in social popularity or social status and most of them have not met many of their friends in person – ever.
• Gen Y is the first generation that can actually measure its popularity.

What can brands do?

• 

  Gen Y is hyper-connected

  Use their willingness to collaborate and include them in your efforts to build your brand. Once they are a part of it, they will help you share your message.

• Talk to the Millennials that work for your company and include them on your advertising and PR efforts – they will help you deliver your message for free using their extensive networks.
• Be mindful of their likes and dislikes when it comes to your brand because they can also share negative messages about it.
• Remember that online video offers them immediacy, emotion, and interaction.
• Listen to them online and engage them online 24/7 using Multicultural Market Intelligence Tools.
• Use these insights to create great products.
• Market to communities, but emphasize individuality.
• Generate Word of Mouth: Let them discover your brand.
• Be real and authentic to your audience in everything you do.

Now, the question becomes, are you truly listening to the Gen Y?

For Latinos, the increase in internet use has been fueled in large part by increases in internet use among groups that have typically had very low rates of internet use.  In particular, foreign-born Latinos, Latinos with less than a high school education, and Latinos with household incomes of less than $30,000 experienced particularly large increases in internet use.

Whereas Latinos gained markedly in overall internet use, the pattern of home internet access changed very little.  In 2006, 79% of Latinos who were online had internet access at home, while in 2008, this number was 81%.  White and black internet users show a similar leveling off.  In 2006, 92% of white internet users had a home connection, compared with 94% in 2008. In 2006, 84% of African American internet users had a home connection, compared with 87% in 2008.

While there was little increase in the likelihood of having a home connection among internet users from 2006 to 2008, rates of broadband connection increased dramatically for Hispanics, as well as for whites and blacks.  In 2006, 63% of Hispanics with home internet access had a broadband connection; in 2008 this number was 76%.  For whites, there was a 17 percentage point increase in broadband connection from 65% to 82%, and for blacks, the increase was from 63% in 2006 to 78% in 2008.

These results are derived from a compilation of eight landline telephone surveys conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Internet & American Life Project from February to October 2006, and from August to December 2008.  In total, the Pew Hispanic Center surveys included 7,554 adults, and the Pew Internet & American Life Project surveys interviewed 13,687 adults.

Source: Gretchen Livingston, Senior Researcher, Pew Hispanic Center
Kim Parker, Senior Researcher, Pew Social & Demographic Trends Project
Susannah Fox, Associate Director, Pew Internet & American Life Project

Fannie Mae Launches New HomePath.com in Spanish Aimed at Helping More Hispanics Buy Homes

Fannie Mae announced the company launched a Spanish version of its HomePath.com website designed to help more potential homeowners who speak Spanish purchase Fannie Mae-owned properties.

The new website in Spanish mirrors the English version of HomePath.com featuring an interactive search tool of Fannie Mae-owned properties nationwide, details about HomePath® financing, a mortgage payment calculator, property alerts, as well as information on foreclosure prevention and the Making Home Affordable((SM)) program.

Through HomePath.com, potential homeowners can access a database that includes a wide selection of homes from around the country – including the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico – which can be purchased directly from Fannie Mae. Properties include detailed information and photographs of single-family homes, condominiums, and town houses located in a variety of neighborhoods.

“HomePath.com is a great resource that can help people find a lifelong home for themselves and their families,” said Fannie Mae Executive Vice President, Terry W. Edwards. “The website has a wealth of information to inform and guide potential homeowners through the process of buying a Fannie Mae-owned property.”

The new release of HomePath.com in Spanish is part of a continuous effort aimed at improving access to information and resources which play a vital role in aiding both English and Spanish-speaking populations in the U.S. purchase homes, while helping minimize the impact on communities hit by foreclosures.

For more information about HomePath, please visit www.HomePath.com and click “En Espanol”, or for direct access to the website in Spanish, visit www.es.HomePath.com.

Fannie Mae exists to expand affordable housing and bring global capital to local communities in order to serve the U.S. housing market. Fannie Mae has a federal charter and operates in America’s secondary mortgage market to enhance the liquidity of the mortgage market by providing funds to mortgage bankers and other lenders so that they may lend to home buyers. Our job is to help those who house America.

Making Home Affordable is a trademark of the United States Department of the Treasury and is used under license.

SOURCE Fannie Mae

“California Cryobank has been servicing Latino communities all over the world for many years,” stated Cappy Rothman, MD, Co-founder. “Our goal is to make the process of selecting and using a sperm donor as easy as possible for our Spanish speaking clients.”

CCB offers Spanish speaking representatives available to assist clients over the phone at 866-927-9622 Mon-Fri from 6am-6pm (Pacific Time).

CCB is well known for their recently released celebrity Donor Look-a-Like website feature. “We have a wide selection of Latino donors who resemble celebrities such as Oscar De La Hoya, Javier Bardem, and Gael Garcia Bernal,” said Rothman.

California Cryobank also provides fertility preservation services to men who are faced with cancer treatments, vasectomies, or those in the military or other high-risk occupations.

Contact: Scott Brown of California Cryobank, +1-310-496-5681

Source: California Cryobank

The Developer Interface consists of a toolbox that developers use when submitting an Open Social application for inclusion on any social site. The toolbox includes documentation of the interfaces available, a news area, a community built for the developers where they can communicate and interact with other application developers as well as with Quepasa’s development team, and the Open Social Sandbox where they can test completed applications with valid test data. The Open Social Sandbox also includes details of how to include Quepasa’s new virtual currency, QDollars, as the payment mechanism for premium applications and virtual goods.

“Having an open platform that allows access to Quepasa members through the Open Social framework is imperative to the growth of rich functionality for Quepasa.com and its growing user base,” said Louis Bardov, CTO of Quepasa. “The activity on Quepasa.com is based on user interaction and our users like to play social games with other members on the site, especially when there are possible rewards in the form of contests and virtual currency. While these contests have been very popular on the site, we are now going to invite and encourage Open Social application developers to build interesting and fun applications for the Quepasa community and we hope and anticipate that these developers will make the minimal modifications required to get adoption of their applications from our rapidly growing user base on Quepasa.com.”

Quepasa’s release of the Developer Interface and the Open Social Sandbox is the latest news in Quepasa’s growing success story. Since its launch as a social network focused on the growing Latino population just over 16 months ago, Quepasa has seen its user base grow to over 5 million registered users. This number continues to grow at an impressive pace because of Quepasa’s differentiated strategy of premium Latino content and entertainment. To date, this growth has been achieved solely through the viral acquisition, powered by Quepasa’s user base.

About Quepasa Corporation

Quepasa Corporation (Pink Sheets: QPSA), headquartered in West Palm Beach, FL with offices in Los Angeles, CA; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Scottsdale, AZ; Miami, FL; and Hermosillo, MX, owns Quepasa.com (www.Quepasa.com), one of the world’s largest, trilingual, Latino social networks. Quepasa.com is an authentic Latino community that provides fun, interactive, and easy to use social tools, and rich multimedia content in English, Spanish and Portuguese to embrace Latinos everywhere, and empower them to connect online, compete in contests and games and share their interests, ideas, and activities.

    Contact:
    Mike Matte, Chief Financial Officer
    Quepasa Corporation
    (561) 491-4186

Source: Quepasa Corporation