EthnicMajority

(CNN) s a musician and social justice activist, online social media has helped Maria Isa sell more CDs and mobilize the growing number of Latinos in her home city of Minneapolis.

Isa wasn't surprised that a study published this summer said Hispanics are among the most active social media users.

"Social media is about accessibility for me," Isa said. "I can send information to my audience with the push of a button on my cell. I'm able to expand my message of social justice in the Latino community and also my work and the works of others who network with me."

There's a growing online audience of people of color. Latinos and African Americans are more than twice as likely to use Twitter as white non-Hispanics, according to the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project.

Much of the reason? Cell phones. Nearly 90% of English speaking Hispanics use mobile devices. But New York Daily News columnist and author Juan Gonzalez said it's an extension of Latino culture.

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(Ogilvy PR) We are not all the same!

As the Hispanic market continues to expand in the U.S., more and more companies are targeting this ever- growing segment of the population through social media initiatives. A 2011 TeleNoticias-LatinoWire Hispanic Social Media Survey found that when marketers employ social media to engage with Hispanic consumers they turn to Facebook (84%), Twitter (62%), YouTube (42%) and Blogs (40%)

As a Hispanic who spends a rather large amount of time in the online space, I find it interesting that often we are still lumped together as one big group of people, as if we all behaved the same. It might come as a surprise to some but some of us like to get our messaging in English. Don’t get me wrong, I am fully bilingual, 100% proud of my Mexican background and I communicate with some friends and family in Spanish in person and online, but I like my promotions in English. Some friends of mine, on the other hand, are much more interested in Spanish promotions.

So why does this matter?

More often than not Hispanics are targeted on the basis of language and/or culture, and as Jose Villa from MediaPost.com points out, “most online Hispanics are comfortable reading and writing in English.”Moreover, the growth of the Hispanic market is happening thanks to the American-born children of immigrants, who are “bilingual, bicultural and increasingly influential within their multi-generational households.” so it is important that you know who in the Hispanic market you are targeting.

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(BlackWeb) The Center of Media and Human Development at Northwestern University released an extensive report today on media, children, and race. The study looked across the board at various uses of the media and showed percentages and time spent on media use among African-American, white, Hispanic, and Asian-American children.

The media plays a tremendous role in children lives daily. This study shows just how much each race engages in each particular activity that involves some aspect of the media. The activities ranged from playing video games to how much children listen to music each day.

All aspects of the media are very important but here lately the focus has been social media activities. It has been reported time and time again that this is the direction society is headed in and if you are not using it, you run the risk of falling behind.

With this being true, the study reports great news for African- American children. Among 8 to 18 year olds, African-Americans spend more time on social networking sites than white children. Although they do fall slightly behind Hispanic and Asian American, in comparison, African-Americans are not behind, but in fact are keeping up just fine and are ahead of their white counterparts.

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(RedOrbit) According to a survey released on Wednesday, more American adults are using Twitter these days, and the micro-blogging service is more popular among African Americans and Latinos.

The Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project said that thirteen percent of the online adults aged 18 and older use Twitter, which is up eight percent from November 2010.

Twenty-five percent of the African-Americans surveyed told Pew they use the service, while 19 percent of the Hispanics and nine percent of the whites said the same thing.

“One in 10 African-American Internet users now visit Twitter on a typical day — that is double the rate for Latinos and nearly four times the rate for whites,” Pew said.

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(Clickz) Eight percent of adult U.S. Internet users now use Twitter, representing six percent of the overall U.S. population, according to research conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

The survey, the results of which were published today, questioned a sample of over 2,250 nationally representative respondents, and also concluded African-American and Hispanic users are over twice as likely to make use of the social network compared with white users. 18 percent of Hispanic respondents and 13 percent of black respondents said they use the service, compared with 5 percent of white respondents, suggesting it has far greater penetration among non-white audiences, although those audiences are likely smaller.

The research also found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that 18- to 29 year-old users are the widest adopters of Twitter, with 14 percent in that age range claiming to use it, compared with seven percent of 30- to 49-year-olds, six percent of 50- to 64-year-olds, and 4 percent of users over 65.

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(Seattle Times) CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Janelle Thomas knows how popular Twitter is among African Americans.

The soon-to-be University of North Carolina-Charlotte graduate has 300 followers on the micro-blogging service, most of them young African Americans like her. One friend sends out as many as 100 tweets — or messages — per day, enough to clog her account and eventually force Thomas to drop him from her circle.

“Literally, some people will tweet ‘Got up’ or “Going to class’ or ‘This girl in front of me is crazy looking,”‘ said Thomas, a communications major.

A recent study from Edison Research, a media research firm, is the latest to confirm Twitter’s popularity among African Americans. They make up 25 percent of Twitter’s 17 million users — about double the percentage of blacks in the U.S. population, according to the Edison study.

Facebook’s more than 116 million U.S. users, by contrast, reflect roughly the same diversity as the American population. (Worldwide, Facebook has more than 400 million users).

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