Spanish Speakers Get Cellphone Social Network

Spanish speakers will be able to send instant messages, blog and share photographs from their cell phones via a Spanish language mobile social networking site, Conexion Latina, beginning next week.

The site will be available through partnerships with all the major U.S. cell phone networks, including Sprint Nextel, T Mobile and Verizon, writes Brandweek. The venture is possible via Vancouver software company AirG, which has identified Spanish speaking subscribers as the fastest growing segment of the company’s 10 million users.

The service will offer advertisers the opportunity to reach a valuable demographic, according to AirG’s founder and director, Frederick Ghahramani. He points out that AirG gets almost 2 billion impressions a month, and has sold banner ads to brands such as Schick, Dunkin Donuts, American Express and Mercedes on the AirG application.

But banner ads are, by now, a more traditional form of mobile advertising, and “spamming,” of course, is not an option, he says. With the social network, Ghahramani is looking for a more sophisticated approach, such as branded communities in which subscribers would receive text messages advertising special deals from the partnering company.

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