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How Latin American Presidents Use Twitter for Good and Evil and Why

Written by Leila Ergo and Antonio Altamirano. This is the first of a series of posts analyzing the impact of Social Media in Latin America .

As discussed in a previous post, Twitter is growing fast in Latin America. Just as in other markets, Twitter’s growth has been mainly due to celebrities joining Twitter thus driving their fans to join in order to connect with their favorite celebrities.

But there’s now a huge factor that is unique to South America and that is quickly becoming a massive adoption driver for Twitter. Heads of State are joining Twitter and using it for good, evil or both. Not all presidents use Twitter in the same way or for the same purpose and not all presidents have achieved the same level of response from their people. Probably due to a lack of authenticity and transparency in their delivery style, but we will let you derive your own conclusions.

Let’s start by looking at Venezuela, Chile and Argentina. The Presidents of these countries have a verified Twitter account and are actively using it.

Hugo Chavez, Venezuela

Hugo is now @chavezcandanga

In April 2010, Chavez joined Twitter with the nick @chavezcandanga. In some countries in Central America and the Caribbean, “Candanga” means devil, but in Venezuela it is applied to a person able to mobilize the masses. Hugo Chavez demonstrated his ability to mobilize the masses by getting 64,000 followers within the first 24 hours after opening his account. As of today Chávez has 798,981 followers and counting. His follower growth has been light-speed fast.

Twitter grew 4.8% in Venezuela after Chavez’s decision to join. So it is conceivable that the president’s entry is driving Twitter’s growth. Even ComScore experts agree with this hypothesis, in their latest report.

Chavez decided to join Twitter to respond to those who began to criticize him from online platforms (blogs, social networks, etc.). Those who criticize him are the same people who were somewhat muted by the measures used by the Venezuelan government to censor and close several traditional media in the country.

However, Chavez strategy might have backfired. Carlos Jimenez, Director of the online polling firm Tendencias Digitales, notes that nearly 90% of the two hundred most-followed Venezuelans on Twitter are opponents of Chavez. Chavez joining Twitter might have indadvertedly lent more credibility to his opponents.

Sebastián Piñera, Chile:

The Earthquake, The Miners and Twitter

In 2008, President Barack Obama used Twitter for his own Presidential campaign. Since 2008, Obama has scored more than 5 million followers. As part of this strategy, Obama became not only the first president to use this platform but also the most popular.

Sebastián Piñera, Chile’s President, currently has more than 190,000 followers. Piñera enjoyed, for a fleeting moment, being the most popular Latin American president on Twitter (beaten only by Obama among presidents in the Americas), until he was overtaken by Chavez who currently has over six times the amount of followers that Piñera has.

Three major events in Chile helped Piñera to build a good relationship with his followers. It should be noted that Pinera is a great example of how a Head of State can use Twitter and innate influence to help the people and to drive change. For Piñera, Twitter is more about helping others than advertising himself.

During the earthquake, Twitter’s Chilean community and Piñera’s own Twitter account were probably the best online channels to communicate news and information to the world and to raise money to help victims.

Through his account, Piñera keeps his followers up-to-speed with the rescue efforts for the miners trapped 700 feet deep after a landslide in northern Chile.

Chile’s Bicentennial is approaching and Piñera is using Twitter to organize and inform about the activities planned for the celebration. Check out his tweet below that translated says “Finishing up Bicentenario’s Tour. En route is a great concert of Desierto Florido at Pan de Azucar park in Atacama.”

Sebastian Pinera Twitter Bicentenario

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Argentina:

Joins Twitter Too Late or Too Fast?

Argentina’s President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, quickly highlighted her presence on Twitter on classic media channels, despite the controversy it generated in her country. @CFKArgentina added more than 40,000 followers in just three days.

During these first three days, Cristina did not write a single Tweet. In an interview with the Argentine daily La Nacion, Orlando Adamo, a specialist in political communication, said: “It is not good that she did not write any tweets yet. This may be a strategy to keep expectations high, but if she does not appear on Twitter in a short time, that may damage the credibility of the same space that she decided to occupy”.

The Argentine context is very different compared to that of Venezuela or Chile. For this reason we are unable to know today what the reaction of people in the future will be, or if the participation of Cristina Fernandez will lead to a greater number of Twitter users.

So far, traditional media is spreading the first tweets from Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, which undoubtedly will encourage people to join Twitter, at least out of curiosity.

Here is a quick exchange that happened on Twitter between Cristian Fernandez de Kirchner y Hugo Chavez. Cristina congratulates Hugo for planning to celebrate Yom Kippur and Hugo replies by saying that he is very happy to hear from her and that it will be a great meeting.

Cristina Kirchner writing to Hugo Chavez on Twitter

Hugo Chavez replies to Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner on Twitter

Twitter’s Position?

In July 2010 the “Summit of the Future” was conducted in Costa Rica. There, the co-creator of Twitter, Dom Sagolla, said that Venezuela has increased its number of active users since President Hugo Chavez used the platform. Sagolla also cited Venezuela’s case as an atypical one compared even with that of Obama.

With regard to the overall picture in Latin America, Sagolla recognized that this platform has brought a revolution in the communication between presidents and the public.

We are far from fully understanding the impact that Twitter and other social networks will have in the South American political and cultural landscape. Though, we are completely sure that this marks a milestone in the streamlining of communication between Latin American leaders and the people.

How Twitter Jump-Started The Entrepreneurial Spirit in Argentina and Latin America

Written by Leila Ergo. Twitter’s massive growth is undeniable. This tremendous growth has sparked unintended but welcomed side-effects for technology entrepreneurs in Latin America and the U.S. hispanic business community. The business side-effects of Twitter adoption is what we are going to touch upon in this post.

There’s no better way of doing this than sharing a success story that grew from Twitter and has blossomed into an energetic technology startup community in Buenos Aires and now is expanding and building a strong relationship with the Silicon Valley. But first let’s get to the basics to understand how Twitter’s growth helped ignite the entrepreneurial spirit in Latin America.

We are hoping that this post will provide background on why Argentina is tremendously fertile ground to build a global technology startup as well.

How Twitter gave birth to Palermo Valley?

Circa 2007, most people using Twitter in Buenos Aires were linked to the Internet and technology industries in one way or another. Santiago Siri –a Twitter user from Buenos Aires and Popego’s founder– realized that a large number of technology startups were concentrated in the neighborhood of Palermo in Buenos Aires. So, Santiago talked to Vanesa Kolodziej, a Buenos Aires based entrepreneur, and both decided to assemble a core group of people to be the center of gravity for what will be known as Palermo Valley. Before Twitter there was no simple and efficient way of bringing together this loosely tied web of entrepreneurs.

They had low expectations. That’s the best way to start things because if your expectations are low you will be pleasantly surprised when your idea is a smashing success, if that ever happens. Santiago and Vanesa were pleasantly surprised. They were expecting no more than 20 people for the first meetup but over 60 showed up. The second meeting was even better. Over 150 entrepreneurs, business and marketing people showed up. For the third meetup they blew over 400 attendees. This massive growth was driven by Twitter and a cultural propensity to easily adopt social tools like Twitter to complete the already strong social interaction.

Palermo Valley now organizes an event every two months which involves between 400 to 600 people, in addition to regular training events.

What is Palermo Valley’s Charter Today?

Palermo Valley is a non-profit venture which aims to gather and help the community of web entrepreneurs in Buenos Aires. Palermo Valley organizes periodic training events and informal gatherings such as the Valley Night, promoting spontaneous connections among the attendees. Palermo Valley is the framework that enhances these relationships by facilitating access to experienced entrepreneurs and fostering a culture of innovation and risk taking.

The expansion of Palermo Valley

There are now other “Valleys” in Argentina and in other Latin American countries which is contributing to forming a truly innovative community across Latin America. Currently, regular meetings are being held in Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Argentina. The next steps for Palermo Valley are to visit Brazil and the Silicon Valley.

Tangelo is sponsoring Mar del Plata Valley. We will be reporting on how the event goes and about the next ventures in the startup world across Latin America and the U.S.

Twitter Trends: Behavior in Latin America and Off-The-Charts Growth

A few days ago the first study on the use of Twitter users in Latin America was published. This study was conducted over a three week period using online questionnaires. The study was based on a sample of 1,756 cases. This recent study of the digital marketing company ComScore revealed that the use of Twitter has grown extensively worldwide and Latin America stands out as the fastest growing region in the world.

Of the 93 million Twitter users in the world, 15 million are from Latin America.

In the past year, the growth of Twitter users in Latin America was 305%
Brazil (20.5%) and Venezuela (19%) are in the second and third place respectively in terms of Twitter users, after Indonesia.
The Asian region ranked second with a growth of 243%
The portrait of a typical user of twitter is: male (75%), between 21 and 30 years (56%), blogger (83%), linked to the world of Internet and new technologies (72%), using the tool because of professional interests (52%).

The data shared by The Cocktail Analysis is also useful. Its research brings more information about the average Twitter user:

Two in five (40%) connect to Twitter from a mobile phone or smartphone, 23% of the messages (updates) that they publish are sent from a mobile device.

From this data we can infer that we are talking about a highly technological users profile, plus the close relationship of Twitter with the Apple iPhone – the device most used for the mobile version of Twitter.

Because of the secrecy that Twitter keeps, regarding the characteristics of its users -a subject on which we will discuss in another blog post-, these first attempts to find out who and how Twitter is used are extremely valuable.

However we have found some flaws in the analysis thus far:

The sample used for the research: 1,756 people. Is this sample large enough to know the status of Twitter throughout Latin America? Probably the study is skewed and completely missed the difference between Brazil and the rest of South America.
Population density: is it possible to compare Brazil and Ecuador, for example?
The type of respondent: The data were collected in some countries where even smartphones were not in local markets, as many respondents were people who had access to buying imported mobile devices. This data shows that these people belong to an “elite” social class, which in Latin America is a rather small group.

If we take into account the global online population, the reality is that the number of people who do not know the application or they simply do not understand it is still quite high.

As the consultant in corporate communications strategies and new technologies Claudia Chez says in her blog post: “Even many who now use Twitter, did not understand it until they started to follow people with similar interests, participate in discussions and feel the value of such contacts. Twitter is one of those applications that rather than we try to explain, are understood only by the experience”.

Nevertheless, the high level of satisfaction shown by Twitter users (a whopping 93%) makes us think that the application has a very positive future, globally. As a result, we will be able to know more about who Twitter users are in the future data that -until now and despite attempts- remained rather vague.

What is your particular experience on Twitter? Do you like the application? Have you try to use that for your business? Which are the results obtained?

Written by @leilaergo

Making the Case for Social Media in Corporations. Four Case Studies

This is a collection of social media studies that are meant to help you make a decision about your social media strategy online for your brand or company. If you are on the fence about whether your brand should fully engage in social media, then consider the fact that even a company like Apple that barely ever jumps into the hype (unless is theirs) is starting to engage with customers via social media sites. Look at the facts below and make a decision later.

Cone Inc. via MediaPost

“78% of new media users interact with companies or brands via new media sites and tools”

A just-released study from Cone Inc. reports that among new-media users, a staggering 78% of them interact with companies or brands via new media sites and tools, up from 59% the year before. Majority Of Consumers Want To Interact With Brands Online. And these users are conversing with brands more often: Some 37% say they do so at least once a week, up from one in four when Cone did the study last year. It’s not enough to simply have new media presences (although 95% of users expect it.) Increasingly, they are looking for companies and brands not just with websites (58%) and email (45%), but with involvement in social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace (30%) and online games (24%). Surprisingly, given their loathing of pop-ups and other intrusive ad methods, 43% say they want to see companies advertise online, up from 25% last year. And women especially are enthusiastic about offers that include freebies, coupons or discounts (58%).

The Participatory Marketing Network via Mashable

This particular study, the third Gen Y behavioral study conducted by The Participatory Marketing Network (PMN) and the Lubin School of Businessâ€™ Interactive and Direct Marketing (IDM) Lab at Pace University took place in October and involved 203 participants between the ages of 18 â€“ 24. The study was focused on examining preferences around social networking, email, texting, talking on the phone, watching TV, reading magazines, and surfing the web (non social media sites).

PRWEEK via AllBusiness

79% of respondents say social media will have more of an impact on connecting with consumers in the next year or two.

The majority of respondents say that social media will have more of an impact on the following aspects over the next year or two: connection to customers (79%); building company or brand awareness (76%); generating sales and revenue (63%); increasing or maintaining market share (62%); managing corporate reputation (61%); and managing stakeholder opinions of the company or its brands (48%). Crisis management was the only aspect where more respondents believe the impact will be the same (49%) than more (41%).

Obamanomics by Yovia

The 4 Câ€™s of Social Velocity: Content, Connections, Community, Conversions

“The question is not â€œdoes viral marketing work?â€, or â€œshould I use Social Media in my marketing plan?â€.
The question is: â€œam I willing to let my consumers and my customers become my channel?â€ Is my brand, product or service good enough to survive and flourish in a democratic marketplace? The Obama campaign embraced this new, open society. Unlike most of the publishing, entertainment and music industries today, the campaign encouraged the rampant re-purposing of content and thus started a movement that took on a life of its own.”

Why is Real-Time So Appealing?

We are social by nature. We need to interact with other people face to face and have that impromptu conversation on the spot and real-time. Up until now, the internet has not been able to give us this level of human interaction. With tools like Twitter and Facebook at our finder tips, we are able to replicate somewhat that craving for human interaction.

The application of real time is not new as you can gather from financial applications that provide traders with real time financial data so that they can make timely decisions. Note I said timely not wise. But what’s different now is that we all can access real time data that we care about mostly in real time. I am now able to keep in touch with my family in Spain, Ecuador and New York by emailing pictures, quotes, audio and video to my Tumblr account. I know that my family is subscrived to this channel so they will get a summary of the posts at the end of the day. I can stay in close contact with my brother who runs an adventure travel company in Ecuador and we can collaborate and work together. Hell, we can even fight like brothers do. All real time and all virtual.

But real time goes beyond the social aspect of it and that’s where the main opportunity lies. For instance, little things that we take for granted like being able to share images in real time via social networks and old school email continue to be a mystery for medical institutions.

Take my last experience with PAMF in Palo Alto for instance. We called the doctor because we were worried about Isaac, one of our 18 month old twins. We waited for a call back for about 90 minutes. Thank god it was not a life or death situation. When the doctor got on the phone she asked a bunch of questions but the main thing that made no sense was that after asking a great deal of information, her conclusion was that she couldn’t really diagnose the issue without seeing a picture of it.

We had a picture. Actually we had about five different ones ready to be emailed directly from our iPhones. So our response was that in fact had an image we can share. We asked for her email address and her answer was puzzling. She said “Oh no, we can’t receive images via email. Our system does not accept images”.

If this was a more worrisome situation we would have had to spend hours waiting to be seen at the urgent care center. All because PAMF has an email system that does not allow images.

In a case like this, the real time web would have been so so helpful, but the current system of fear around medicine keeps those institutions in the dark ages of computing. Real time is appealing to us because it allows us to mimic a face to face interaction and enrich a phone call or connect with friends and colleagues with a mobile device. It allows us to put a bit of our human nature back into the internet.

One Tweet, One Post, One people.

The Story of How CNN and Twitter Helped The Latino Community Grow Stronger

A tremendous missed opportunity. A magnificent failure and a huge disappointment for the Latino community. A lack of balance. That is how Latino In America by @CNN has been described on Twitter and the blogosphere.

A tremendous missed opportunity to show how the Latino community despite its problems and obstacles is getting ahead. Many people were looking forward to this because it just seemed right to get mainstream coverage for the successes of the Latino community Â in spite of the deep socio-economic disparities that tends to separate us from the mainstream.

Latino in America was supposed to highlight us with our shortcomings and successes. What we saw were mostly failures and a show focused on strengthening stereotypes rather than breaking them.

51 million Latinos in America. We will soon be the mainstream. A mainstream that represents the America we all love. A diverse America where opportunity is available to everyone and where the color of your skin is not an issue in your quest for success. To be truthful, for a lot of us it has not been. That is why we’ve spoken up in the most positive way possible and with the tools we’ve been given: freedom of speech, community, knowledge and the internet.

How did the response come together from Twitter?

From the chaos of Twitter, I sent one tweet with a suggested a response. One blog post by Julio Varela implemented the suggestion. One community stood behind it to fill this blog post with wonderfully real stories of hard work and successes. Hundreds of responses in less than 24 hours. Then Mike Robles chimed in with a video (web)challenging the assumptions made by the show. It wasn’t only people on the internet that were disenchanted by the content of the series. Geraldo Rivera with commentary directed towards Lou Dobbs actions were highlighted by HuffPo as a backdrop of the Latino in America TV special.

What next?

Help us become one. One tweet sparked creativity and strengthen community. Imagine if we all make it our goal to give a tweet and try help and support each other. Here are a few things that you can do to help:

Post your story at this link and share it with the rest of Latinos In America that are making positive change happen
Retweet the link and make it known to your network
Tag fellow latino bloggers on del.icio.us. One of the tags that you can use is #latism
Follow @latism @julito77 @John_Rivera @antoniocapo @mikeroblescomic @Mcmex @ergeekgoddess @carogonza @AnaRC @LouisPagan @maxgmacias @MichaelaKocon

It’s the beginning of something big.

Top 10 Brands on Twitter and Facebook

How are the top brands performing on Twitter and Facebook? What are their follower numbers? Are any of them doing it wrong? Read on for in depth answers.

The Top 15 Brands as classified by Interbrands have been analyzed to find out their level of presence and success in two of the main social media channels: Twitter and Facebook. Google, the dear of the internet shows a strong lead vs. any other brand in one channel but a rather weak following in the other. IBM and BMW although strong are not taking full advantage of their brand power. Here are some of the key findings of this initial study.

Study Top 15 Brands Social Presence Comparison

GE passes with flying colors as it was easy to find just by searching http://facebook.com/GE. Plus they have a microsite dedicated to this effort

IBMâ€™s efforts with other accounts like http://twitter.com/ibmdesign and http://twitter.com/ibmevents is commendable but they really need to get the @IBM account on twitter. On Facebook there is a strong employee presence but no clear corporate sponsorship of the group or a facebook page devoted to the brand

There is a huge difference in the number of fans that a page that is obviously supported by the company on Facebook and a page that does not look like is 100% legit. Take McDonalds with over 1 Million fans vs. Toyotaâ€™s page which look amateurish in comparison and has only gathered a little over 50K fans

Google is the all time winner on Twitter where the it seems to indicate that the heavy users of the internet reside. Over 1.6 million followers on Twitter vs. just over 350K on Facebook.

BMW has a strong fan base but its presence on these channels is minute compared to other top brands that are taking full advantage of the medium.

The Evolution of Twitter: A Look Back At The Real-Time Killer App

I am still amazed at the one billion dollar valuation that twitter has been able to squeeze out of a service many say its nothing but hot air. It might very well be that twitter is not the future but the rough present of what’s to come in the real-time space. Whatever Twitter might be, it has turned businesses upside down and has opened a treasure chest of business and personal connections that otherwise they might have never been.

Thinking that maybe these milestones represent the evolution of Twitter from a user perspective, I decided to share them with you and would love to hear about your own milestones whatever these maybe. It is interesting to read these milestones from the users perspective so that you can get a better feel of what people are doing and what they are looking for on Twitter.Without further ado, here is my milestone timeline of Twitter.

Antonio Twitter Usage

Why did I join Twitter?

I once was also very skeptical of Twitter and never thought that I would ever need to use such a service. An awful after thought of Odeo, I thought when I saw the little marine blue link at the top of the Odeo homepage. I clicked. I signed up and tweeted and nothing happened and that was it. I stopped using twitter for about 5 to 6 months. I was too busy and submerged in the world of search engine marketing. Â Never thought I would use it again.

Using Twitter

I went back to using Twitter after about five or six months since I signed up. Out of the blue 500 people where already following me. I had done nothing to deserve that but there they where. Waiting for me to engage and talk about anything and everything.

Using Twitter Heavily

I needed to get over the initial stalky feeling that I had while using Twitter. I couldn’t believe that everything and anything would be public if you chose to. I was at awe and marveled at the possibilities that a company would have in an environment like this. Unfortunately many companies have chosen to block access to external social networks according to a study by Robert Half Technology. What the study fails to mention is the usage of internal social networks and how widely spread they become.

Searching and Tweeting for Value

There was Twitter without top level internet bloggers (aka. Robert Scoble) and then there was Twitter after all major bloggers joined. It was a geeky place. Most conversations where around technology, web 2.0 and code. It was easy to keep up with the brightest minds in the business. Then it got diluted by celebrities and a user growth of over 1000%. Twitter continues to provide value but in a very different way by allowing you to build trust not only traffic.

While I agree that Twitter takes attention away from more mundane tasks for more traditional occupations, I also think that Twitter can increase engagement with customers. Finding value in Twitter can be tricky but it can certainly pay off. The channel is very different from what we’ve seen in blogs and search and that is the reason why it needs to be executed in a different way. Rules of web publishing cannot be applied to twitter or any other conversational channel.

For those of you interested in the evolution of twitter from a business perspective, here is a review by BusinessInsider about the milestones of Twitter.

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