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Social Site TierraNatal.com Connects Immigrants in the U.S. to Mexico



BY SARA D. ANDERSON

We live in an era where online social networking is an increasingly effective way for people to communicate.

The global social networking industry is estimated at more than $6 billion, according to online data trackers Informa plc and eMarketer.

As social networks have grown, niche networks have developed designed for specific demographics. One such network, launched in July, is TierraNatal.com, a service for immigrants living in the United States who want to connect with friends and family in Mexico.

A specialty of the site is connecting immigrants to “hometown associations,” organizations that link U.S. immigrants who hail from the same communities in Mexico.

Rancho Santa Fe resident Liliana Townshend, founder and chief executive officer of TierraNatal.com, said she discovered a common desire among immigrants to connect with Mexico when she attempted to communicate with distant friends and relatives.

TierraNatal, meaning “native land,” is more than just a typical social networking outlet with commentary from individuals.

TierraNatal.com represents more than 300,000 Mexican towns, each with its own municipal profile.

Through journalistic reports from residents of Mexico, visitors are able to stay current with each town and give back to their communities of origin, as individuals post news and information about events, politics and sports as well as personal profiles.

This is a site “built by the people that live there,” said Townshend, who added she “wants people to discover the real Mexico” , to feel for the town, the heritage, and the community building.

Margarita Quihuis, an advisor to TierraNatal who lives in the Bay Area, says the site “is a virtual platform where both individuals and hometown clubs can more effectively communicate, raise funds and organize with each other, domestically and across the border.”


Evolution Of Startup

TierraNatal.com evolved from Jocotepec.com, a startup Townshend created four years ago.

Even though Townshend grew up in Los Angeles, she spent every summer in her father’s hometown, Jocotepec, in central Mexico. Townshend said she wanted a way to reconnect with her community. Intended as a hobby, the site generated 90,000 page views a month.

Townshend then realized that there were others who wanted to reconnect with their hometowns and that she could create a virtual community for Mexico towns such as Jocotepec.

Seventy-five percent of TierraNatal.com users are immigrants living in the United States, and of those 64 percent live in California, according to digital-telepathy, a San Diego company that designs online businesses. With a demographic between the ages of 18 and 40 years old, most Web site visitors are involved with federations and hometown associations, also known as HTAs.

Federations are formed by individual associations and link HTAs under a common origin.

Joanna Medina, a Mexican-American resident of Los Angeles who provides public relations services for the Federation of Zacatecas, is a frequent visitor to TierraNatal.com.

Not only does she communicate with other users that share common interests and a common heritage, she said she and other users access the site to learn about fund raisers orchestrated by federations and HTAs in the United States, to help pay for nonprofit projects, such as building roads and schools in Mexican towns.

She also is able to view pictures from federation events such as pageants and golf tournaments.

Even though there are 65 to 75 HTAs within each federation, Medina said most of these clubs are small, and sometimes unorganized.

“TierraNatal.com is going to benefit tremendously because it is going to create that link that doesn’t exist out there,” Medina said. “These organizations have run such separate entities that they are moving towards creating that liaison, becoming more of a whole.”

Townshend does most of her marketing in San Francisco and Los Angeles, home to most federations and HTAs in California.


Selling Ads

Self-funded, the Web site is expected to be profitable eventually. So far, most of the proceeds come from direct advertising, although the company declined to provide revenue information.

Most advertisers are U.S. companies that want to reach Mexican markets, such as direct marketing services firm Consorte Media Inc. and Google Adsense.

The rest of the revenue will come from community fund raising and premium business listings.

Launching next month, these business listings will be online directories, and can be purchased by other local businesses.

Townshend said these listings will promote “users to support hometown businesses and the businesses of those who have immigrated into the U.S.”

Townshend also has been working with the local governments in Mexico. She noted that many Mexican-Americans have dual citizenship or are still a Mexican citizen and can vote in Mexico.

So to keep constituents up to date with current public projects, local governments will soon be able to post announcements in the news section of her site. Townshend said she is currently working with the Mexican states of Jalisco, Zacatecas and Colima.

Sarah Carr, marketing services associate for digital-telepathy, helps Townshend distribute promotional items and build relationships with media sources. In addition to marketing efforts, Carr coordinates all public relations and helps with Web design, copywriting and the development of the site.

“Our goal is to have each town (represented) in TierraNatal to be communicating with expatriates in the U.S. and throughout the world, mostly through citizen journalism, although the local media and government can also have a voice,” Carr said.

Quihuis adds that the site is also a good resource for government agencies that “want to discover and support the clubs in their economic development efforts.”

An advisor for TierraNatal.com, Quihuis’ expertise in accounting, Mexican transnationalism and hometown associations enabled her to provide Townshend with background information on the behavioral and immigration patterns of Mexican immigrants.

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