MySpace and Facebook: Gateway to Youth, Latinos
If you have (or know) teenagers or college students, you may have noticed that they’re MySpace and/or Facebook junkies. These social media service are powerhouses of online visibility. According to Alexa, right now MySpace is the Web’s third most popular site, after search giants Google and Yahoo. (YouTube currently ranks fourth, but then Facebook is fifth.) These services are not just for kids, struggling musicians, and attention-seekers. They’re actually direct conduits to the next generation of many important groups and communities that are often underserved by mainstream news…
If you’re not familiar with MySpace and Facebook, they both work in similar ways: You create a free account, and then collect “friends” (other users whom you know, want to know, or find interesting for some reason). By collecting friends, MySpace and Facebook users create their own unique virtual communities. They can communicate with their “friends” individually or en masse, and via groups that self-organize on either site.
Social media is geared toward individuals, but organizations and groups can have a presence there too. And many do, from companies and nonprofits to informal communities and clubs. This allows them to reach as many people at once as they care to have friends.
For example, many political campaigns (including Barack Obama and John McCain) have MySpace accounts—ostensibly to reach the younger voter base. Interest groups such as the Save Darfur Coalition are there, too. Even The Onion is on MySpace, which expands its readership and fan base considerably. The Orlando Sentinel is on MySpace, too. You’ll find a similar array of organizations and groups represented on Facebook, too.
Does your news org have a MySpace or Facebook presence yet? If not, you can sign up for free. It’s probably best to be on both services—but if you don’t have time for both, ask young people in your community (and especially youth from communities of difference) which service they prefer, and go with that first.
Once there, who might you “friend?” (Yes, on social media sites, “friend” is a verb.) You can friend whoever you wish. On MySpace, use the “find people” function to search for potential friends according to interests and more. Check for a city or neighborhood group near you. In Facebook it’s harder to search for friends or group by geography—but if you find a few local users or groups, check who they’ve friended for more leads.
Keep in mind that you’ll need to spend some time reaching out to people and groups on these sites in order to entice people to friend you. In social media, “If you build it, they will come,” almost never works. You’ll need to start engaging these users where they already are—by leaving comments on their pages, participating in forum discussions, etc.
If there’s a Hispanic presence in your region, consider also creating a presence for your news org on MySpace Latino. This Spanish-language site offers the same deep, rich, personal experience of MySpace, plus some extra interests highlighted (such as Latin music). If you want to reach millions of Spanish-speaking MySpace users all at once, consider advertising on MySpace Latino. You could have thousands of fresh eyes on your organization by this time next week.
