Margaret Fontana is on a mission. A first generation Italian-American, Fontana is the founder of ItalianAmericanGirl.com, and the founder and president of Italian-Americans in Social Media. She’s making good use of social technologies, using the tools to educate others about Italians by debunking myths and celebrating her culture. We caught up with Fontana and asked her about her new initiatives.
Technicultr: What is ItalianAmericanGirl.com?
Margaret Fontana: ItalianAmericanGirl.com is an Italian-American cultural site I created a few years ago to start expressing my experiences & point of view about growing up as a first generation Italian-American.
TCu: When did you launch the site and what kind of response have you received so far?
We're fast approaching the conclusion of the 2010 U.S. Census and public and private institutions alike are waiting expectantly to see the level of growth that has occurred in the U.S. population generally, and in many cases with particular attention to the various multicultural populations in the U.S.
But in the land of social media most sites do not collect information on user ethnicity. MySpace is the only site that does collect demographic information from its users; Twitter collects none. In between are sites like Facebook and countless others that offer to collect some information about their users.
On one hand, the decision to collect information is one that is subject only to the founder's wishes and applicable law. But at the same time, with increasing research on social media user demographics and online behavior, attempts to ascertain user ethnicity (without asking the users), and a burgeoning opportunity for companies and non-profit organizations to connect with hard-to-reach demographics, there is evidently interest in the data and certainly more at stake than simple identification.
We've asked five experts to weigh in on whether social networking sites should collect ethnic data. Their responses are below.
I recently presented at the Web 2.0 Expo – San Francisco on culture and social media. My specific topic was on using social media to engage multicultural communities. The presentation deck is below:
Lexus recently announced a social media campaign geared towards African-American consumers, featuring Universal Motown recording artist (and recent Harvard grad) Ryan Leslie. In keeping with its emphasis on social media, Lexus also used pitchengine along with traditional media sources to publicize the initiative:
LatISM, a group for social media professionals of Hispanic and Latino origin, hosted a conference in Washington, DC on December 11-12, 2009 as part of its LatiSM National Heritage Tour. The DC conference featured speakers on a variety of subjects, including Web 2.0, Gov 2.0, brand building, mobile technology, social media 101, and social good.
The Middle Eastern tech world has been around for some time, but recently there has been some solid activity that points to increased technological growth on the horizon. Here are some updates you may have missed (these are primarily focused on the Arabic tech community, a subset of Middle Eastern tech):