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Spanish-speaking Cell Phone Users Get Mobile
Networking August 23, 2006
By Jenny
Holland
NEW YORK --
Starting next week, mobile phone users across the
country will be able to hook up to a Spanish language
mobile social networking site, Conexion Latina.
The venture is the brainchild
of Vancouver software company AirG and will be available
through partnerships with all the major U.S. cell phone
networks, including Sprint Nextel, T Mobile and Verizon,
said Air G founder and director, Frederick
Ghahramani.
The service,
which is known by different names depending on which
cell phone network the user belongs to, will enable
subscribers to instant message, blog, and share
photographs, all from a cell phone, and all in Spanish.
The one million
self-identified Spanish speaking subscribers are the
fastest growing segment of AirG’s 10 million users,
Ghahramani said last week, but added that the overall
mobile network communities are experiencing strong
growth.
“In the past eight
months, we’ve moved from 5 to 10 million subscribers,”
Ghahramani said. He attributed that growth to
improvements in cell phone design that makes them easier
to use. Newer handsets, colored displays and better
service all combine to make the experience “look and
feel a lot more analogous to what you can do online.”
From a marketing perspective,
Ghahramani said that the company’s service is an
opportunity to reach a valuable demographic.
“Randomly spamming users
doesn’t make sense,” Ghahramani said. “[We get] almost 2
billion impressions a month. We bring to the advertisers
the customer identity to really target that customer
effectively.”
AirG has
attracted the attention of a host of brand-name
companies, according to Allison Webb, marketing
communications manager. Schick, Dunkin Donuts, American
Express, and Mercedes are among the companies that have
paid for banner ads on the AirG application.
Webb called banner ads a “more
traditional form of mobile marketing,” and said that the
company is now aiming for a more sophisticated
approach.
“We want to
create branded communities,” Webb said, in which
subscribers would get texts advertising promotions and
special deals from the company partnering with AirG.
“You’re getting access to
something that the general public doesn’t have,” she
said. “It’s not sending out pure promotions, it’s
relationship building.”
Michael Gartenberg, vp and research director
at New York’s Jupiter Research, said that the growth of
mobile networking communities is a “natural progression”
to the cell phone from the computer.
“For the younger demographic typing messages
on their phone keypad is as natural as an older
demographic typing on a keyboard,” he said. Today’s 18-
to- 24- year- olds, he said, “have a greater affinity
towards this type of interaction on the phone.”
For Ghahramani, its not just
the younger demographic that is signing up for mobile
networking.
“The people who
power America don’t sit in front of a computer,” he
said. “The Starbucks employee, the taxi driver, hair
salon [worker], they don’t spend the day behind a
PC.”
For those people, the
cell phone is increasingly where they connect with
friends and advertisers. “Its kind of a PC replacement,”
he said.
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