This is an abstract of the Final Paper for the University of Palermo Program "Marketing For Entertainment and Media Industry" - Prof. Al Lieberman. It was written together with fantastic group of professionals from Argentina and Colombia, conformed by Mariana Mutri, Jesus Alfonzo Perez, Juan Camilo Franco and Angela Caicedo. I will always cherish my days preparing this paper with them. Dearest friends.
Facebook in Colombia and Sonico in Argentina have reached unprecedented levels of subscribers. Even though Facebook is known worldwide, in Colombia it has reached more influence and market share than any other social network in Latin American. In Argentina, even though the top global social networks have all found good reception, Sonico, the local social network created and conceived by Argentineans, won the premier position among the young audiences.
Why have these 2 networks been privileged with the audiences’ preference among all the possibilities they nowadays have on the web? The young audiences seem to have the answer and the way they interact with and in the social networks is also the key to understanding why these new media platforms have become so popular among brands and companies that want to reach the young elusive market.
In only one year Facebook has almost doubled its subscription base in Colombia: we will analyze the effects and influence this social network had in the war against terrorism in Colombia. And in only one year, Argentina’s Sonico reached the top of the ranking and became the most important social network in this country. The language barrier that other social networks did not solve in a timely manner seems to be the answer to Sonico’s success.
Both Facebook and Sonico have developed aggressive strategies to capture the attentions of their audiences and now they are ready for the next step. In the case of Facebook Colombia, to monetize their incredible valuable base of subscribers and in the case of Sonico, not only leverage the valuable audience they gathered but increase their base of investors and be ready for the Mobile revolution.
FACEBOOK COLOMBIA
We find extremely interesting the fact that Facebook, which is a social community network perceived as an elitist one and has never invested a penny in Marketing in Colombia, is still the social community with the largest number of users in this country.
Here are some figures:
- This social network was launched in February 2004 as a close community for Harvard students.
- In March 2004 it is released for students of Yale University, Columbia and Stanford.
- In the year 2005 it opened to all educational institutions.
- Finally in 2006 everybody could be part if this social network.
Colombia has today 2´691,760 Facebook users; this means that it is the largest Facebook community in Latin America and the fifth in the world. The growth in its subscribers’ base has been impressive during 2008.
We consider that there are four main reasons for this phenomenon:
1. Colombia (as Chile) had an important migration due to internal violence. This resulted in many people loosing its ties and family and friends connections in Colombia. The development of social networks was an opportunity to get back in touch with the people who were back at home.
2. An important number of immigrants where either high school students or university students; this means that there are a lot of Colombian students in Universities abroad in comparison to other Latin American countries. Colombian students in the USA were early adopters of social networks and of Facebook especially as this network in particular was intended for US College Students.
3. Colombians do not have a local Social Network (like Argentina’s Sonico or Brazil’s Orkut) so Colombian’s adopted the social network they were more used to when studying.
4. Last but not least, it is important to consider the population’s access to high speed internet and broadband in the country. The British firm Point Topic described that Colombia was the fifth nation in the world with the biggest increase in usage of broadband services in the first trimester of the year 2008.
In Colombia, Facebook has become a new debate area for young voters. The social network has become the favorite site for politicians and potential voters. From city majors to senators and even presidential candidates interact with their followers through the Facebook wall, and show pictures and videos as part of their campaign.
David Luna, a Colombian congressman, has achieved the maximum amount of friends allowed in Facebook (5,000 people).
Four of the top ten discussion groups in Colombia are related to Politics.
1. "Un millón de voces contra las Farc" (367.800).
2. "Personas que apoyamos a Uribe" (135.951).
3. "Por los que dicen que van llegando..." (116.398).
4. "Yo también me río cuando alguien se cae" (112.828).
5. "Colombia es Pasión" (100.407).
6. "Las 30 mentiras más grandes" (74.935).
7. "Lo que no me acuerdo... no pasó" (74.182).
8. "Exigimos la renuncia de Piedad Córdoba" (70.120).
9. "¿Cuántos colombianos somos?" (65.922).
10. "Las Farc sí son terroristas" (46.703).
Colombian analysts have made reference to the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain, presidential candidates of the U.S. to show the scope that Facebook could have. If the decision depended on Facebook, Obama would be the next U.S. President, with more than 1,250,000 followers in Facebook in comparison with John McCain with only 187,299 followers. Facebook proved to be a successful resource for Obama’s campaign against Hillary Clinton.
In February 2008, Facebook was used to congregate a rally against “Las FARC” (the Colombian guerrilla group) in cities around the world. It has been the largest mobilization in the World gathered using social networks. More than 4,8 million people where gathered in Colombia and in 125 cities around the world, thanks to Facebook’s influence. This march was an example that other countries followed afterwards, for example Spain, to organize rallies against the terrorist group ETA.
Facebook had a global growth of 153% since June 2007. It is the largest social networks’ growth compared with its competitors such as Hi5, MySpace LinkedIn, etc. In Latin America social networks subscribers grew 33% reaching 53 million users. This growth is inferior if compared with Middle East and Africa that have each grown 66% or Europe with a growth of 35%. This is why the Colombian case is very important for its impressive growth, nevertheless it should be said that it is the tendency in the region. It is also true that Latin-Americans like to be connected to their families and friends abroad and they find social relations to be a fundamental part in their lives and they dedicate hours per week to get in touch.
SONICO ARGENTINA
Sonico - “Friends Connected”
The Argentinean-based Social Network was launched in July 2007 and is the largest Network in terms of users in this country.
With an initial investment of 1 million U.S. dollars, Sonico was founded in July 2007 by Rodrigo Teijeiro, who is today the company’s CEO. At the age of 29, Teijeiro is also the owner of other sites such as Cumplealerta.com (Birthday calendar and alerts services); Tarjetasbubba.com and Tupostal.com (E-cards services). After one year, Sonico enjoys 12 million users in Latin America, among which 4.5 million are in Argentina. In Brazil, it has become the second largest network after Okrut-Google only three months after the Portuguese language site was launched.
The following chart shows an exponential growth of Sonico’s users during the years 2007-2008 according to ComScore Media Metrix. In only one year, Sonico won a privileged position among competitors and in Argentina it has exponentially increased its subscriber base and is now a leader in the market who has left behind world leaders such as MySpace, and Facebook, and local competitors such as PsicoFXP.
With a staff of 90 employees, Sonico provides users with services such as messaging, media and photo sharing, e-cards, birthday alerts and games. Sonic also offers Customized Skins, Videos, Photos, HTML Boxes, Comments, Viral as well as Subscriptions. Notwithstanding these valuable features, Sonico’s major asset is certainly the provision of Security & Privacy to its users. In June 2008, Sonico has raised a total of 4.3 million U.S. dollars from DN Capital (London-based venture capital firm investing in software and digital media companies), Fabrice Grinda (Co CEO of Olx - Classified site Network), Alec Oxenford (DeRemate.com) and Martin Varsavsky (FON - Wi-Fi Services).