Tweet This article originally appeared on FoxNews. Venture capitalists take note, Latin America’s Internet entrepreneurs are ramping up. A recent panel at SXSW Interactive entitled “Accelerating Killer Latam Startups” featured three digital pioneers and start up investors from the region, each with a roadmap to finding and investing in new companies. Bedy Yang and her colleagues at 500 Startups, a seed fund and startup accelerator, have organized “Geeks on a Plane,” an invite-only tour of Miami, Sao Paulo, and Buenos Aires May 10-20. Together, they

Tweet Which region will provide growth for your business in 2011? Paul Gunning, the Chief Executive Officer at Tribal DDB, recently told me, “Latin America is another China” because it has “millions of consumers with rising purchasing power.” A number of recent articles support that claim: This article from Forbes – Forget China, Look To Latin America – highlights that, “with inflation a concern in the Far East, commodity and consumer-driven economies like Brazil and Chile may be 2011′s biggest winners.” It goes on to

Tweet Following is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. A few weeks ago, while having a very American lunch of cheeseburgers and milk shakes, my goddaughter Madeline, 11, and her brother Ricardo, 13, asked me, “so, what’s your book about Uncle Joe?” “Well, it’s about how families like yours use the Internet and what is the best ways for companies to communicate with people who speak Spanish,” I responded. Madeline and Ricardo speak Spanish with

Tweet This article originally appeared on MediaPost and is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. The new report from the Pew Hispanic Trust — Latinos Online — shows that 64% of all U.S. Hispanics use the Internet and that foreign-born Latinos have crossed the tipping point with 52% online. As the Hispanic audience grows, they seek new content and increasingly find and regularly visit foreign web sites. Why is this happening? “Search engines and social

Tweet This article originally appeared on MediaPost and is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. After reading Felipe Korzenny’s and Lee Vann’s column about Hispanics’ adoption of social media relative to other ethnic demographics, a question came to mind: how will social networks affect the acculturation process among Hispanics? The ability to keep in touch with family and friends from countries-of-origin via email, Skype and online newspapers back home makes it easier than ever. Travel

Tweet Following is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. Scott Heiferman, now famous for starting MeetUp.com, and Adam Seifer launched Fotolog, a leading photo sharing site, in 2002 as an online community for their friends in Brooklyn, NY to post photos and share them. Instead of building up a domestic fan base, as they thoughts would happen, their user base took them down an unexpected path, according to Yossi Langer, Chief Product Officer, and Arne

Tweet Following is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. Many U.S. Hispanic publishers and e-commerce sites find that when they launch a site in Spanish targeting U.S. Hispanics many Latin Americans find their site for a number of reasons: 1) Their site has been optimized for search and so other Spanish-speakers find the site 2) 136 million consumers read in Spanish online, most of whom live outside of the U.S. 3) Sites in the U.S.

Tweet Following is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. Image via Wikipedia In June of 2009, the Cervantes Institute of Chicago launched a short story contest on their blog with the goal of engaging local writers and Spanish students in the Chicago area. What happened provides a perfect example of how our expectations of launching a Spanish-language promotion or website do not conform to the reality of the World Wide Web. Salvador Vergara, the librarian

Tweet With computer prices falling, Internet users skyrocketing and no borders on the Internet, how can marketers turn their international Spanish-language web site visitors into revenues? That is the question that Juan Tornoe and I will answer in our panel discussion at SXSW Interactive in 2010. Please submit your feedback, suggestions and vote for the panel here on SXSW’s panel picker: Some of the questions that we will answer include: 1. How do consumers cross geo-political boundaries to find, read about and buy what they

Tweet Christine Webster-Moore, the VP of Business Initiatives at Best Buy, recently outlined three goals for how Best Buy wants to increase their sales among Hispanics and Latin Americans at the Hispanic Retail 360 conference: 1) We need to be more fluid in how we invite Spanish-language users to our web site including US Hispanics, Mexicans and visitors in our border stores. 2) We need to provide more creative ways to have our customers buy. We need to experiment more with programs like Flexicompras, our