Digital Week in Review: Facebook Targets Hispanic Demographic, Twitter Trades Big On Opening Day and The Mystery Google Barge Amsive Digital Published: November 8, 2013 2 min read Categories: News In this week’s Digital Week in Review: Facebook targets its Hispanic demographic, Twitter has a big opening day on the stock exchange, and rumors circulate about Google’s mystery barges. Facebook to Target Hispanic Demographic There are approximately 23 million American Hispanic monthly active Facebook users, which is why the social network has launched a new ad product to help brands target this explosive demographic. Alexander Hohagen, Vice President of Facebook Latin America, has recently relocated to Miami to help with Facebook’s efforts to reach the Hispanic consumer market. Christian Martinez, former Univision VP of Network and Interactive Sales is also joining Hohagen in the new Miami office. Currently there are 53 million Hispanics living in the United States and that number projected to increase rapidly over the next several years. Facebook released this set of stats in support of their new project: U.S. Hispanics access Facebook more frequently than U.S. users overall, as the social network pointed out that 69 percent of U.S. Hispanics were active on six of the past seven days, compared with 62 percent of all U.S. users. U.S. Hispanics also access Facebook via mobile devices at a greater rate than overall U.S. users. Facebook also states that in the past 30 days alone, Hispanic users in America were responsible for: 338.4 million photos uploaded 1.1 billion comments 5.83 billion likes 4 million video uploads 7.6 million check-ins Twitter Has Big Opening Day Trading as a Public Company Yesterday Twitter traded as a public company for the first time ever, under the ticker name $TWTR. The stock opened at $45.10 , a 73% pop from it originally being priced at $26. The pop values Twitter at about $31.8 billion, based on the 705,098,594 fully diluted shares. The stock closed at $44.90 which is 20 cents below the opening pop but still 70% higher than its 26 dollar per share IPO pricing. Twitter has been the most anticipated IPO of a social media network since Facebook went public back in 2012. The build up and disappointment of the Facebook listing is believed to have had an impact on Twitter’s conservative pricing estimates. According to Tech Crunch; “The market right now is strong for social networks. LinkedIn, valued at $24.82 billion, is trading at over $220/share. Facebook, valued at over $121 billion, is trading at just under $50/share. Both, and those companies’ various partners, are likely to see a lift as a result of Twitter’s trajectory.” Google Mystery Barge For People to Learn About Their Technology Google has anchored mystery barges in Portland, Maine and San Francisco, which have become topics of interests since the media caught wind of these reports last month. They are rumored to be “an interactive space to teach people about Google’s technology”. “Google Barge … A floating data center? A wild party boat? A barge housing the last remaining dinosaur? Sadly, none of the above. Although it’s still early days and things may change, we’re exploring using the barge as an interactive space where people can learn about new technology.”- Google Spokesperson CBS KPIX dished a story that mentioned a luxury showroom, a party deck, and an area for retail stores that could showcase Google Glass and other projects. This project has been designed with portability in mind and is apparently the brain child of the Google(x) labs which are headed by Google founder Sergey Brin. Cnet was the first to break the story on the supposed water-born data centers. To read more click here.