Facebook Bridges Borders For Latinos
I came across an interesting Facebook application this morning that seems to have far-reaching implications for how we as Latinos use technology, social media in particular, and how this in turn changes the way we communicate with each other. Not to get all philosophical on you, but for my morning post about growing Facebook applications by daily active users for Inside Facebook, I came across an app called Tarjetitas.
Tarjetitas is a simple app that allows users to share greeting cards in Spanish to the Facebook walls of their friends, and also to publish a card to their news feed. What was interesting in the story I wrote for Inside Facebook was that the number of users had grown just about equally between the U.S. and Mexico. In other words, people who use Facebook in Spanish and people in Mexico were using the same application just about equally.
As we wrote previously, there are about 2.7 million Facebook users in the U.S. who list Spanish as one of the languages they speak. Combine that with the 18.1 million Mexican Facebook users, and there’s ample opportunity for Spanish speakers to be engaged on Facebook. But as I mentioned earlier, it’s the way technology fits between people who speak Spanish here and people who speak Spanish there that’s really interesting.
Because if you look at Tarjetitas, it’s actually not an outstanding application. The greeting cards feature animations and bright colors reminiscent of MySpace and the early days of social media. Rather, it’s what’s hidden between the glitter that’s important and what half of companies not engaged with Latinos on social media platforms aren’t seeing: communication in a common cultural context.
If you look at the cards themselves, it’s the phrasing, the branding, the manner in which these cards communicate their simple messages of “hello” and “I’m thinking of you” that are at the heart of Tarjetitas’ popularity. It’s a language issue, but it’s deeper than that, it’s also a rhetorical one, a cultural one. The play on words, which is so common in Spanish, is present in these messages, as is that wry sarcasm that I never fully grasped when I was in Mexico.
Which is to say, if you can find a way to give people what they want how they want it, you can find yourself at the top of their list. It worked for Tarjetitas.
Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD
