Rockero.com

Rockero.com is a networking site centered around Latin rock music. According to the page it is ‘the Official website of Latin Alternative rock, indie rock en espanol and spanish rock’

Latest rumors of your favorite Rock en Espanol artists. Meet other Rockeros who are interested in Spanish Rock music. Spanish Rock News, Spanish Rock Artists, Spanish Rock Forums, Spanish Rock Chat

Rockero is a spanglish word which has been absorbed into the spanish language. It adds the gender appropriate a or o to the tail end of the english word Rocker. Like “aparcar” (to park) it has become a part of the official lexicon, and unlike tickete (ticket) it is not still considered in the hybrid (the appropriate word for ticket: boleto)

I found this page interesting because of its hybrid condition: it is a highly active community, where individuals create profiles a-la-myspace, and participate in lively forums. Like in most social networks, a number of individuals have accumulated a certain amount of clout.

What is interesting, though, is how members of this community interpret and use the platform. Though the community is ‘devoted to music’ it is clear that socializing and sharing opinions and thoughts unrelated to music are a vital part of the community. Personally, i think it is what keeps it going – since music updates are RSS feeds. Music seems to be a hobby rather than a purpose.

The site was launched sometime in early 2005, though site information is difficult to come by. The earliest administrator is cited as joining the network in february of 2005. Rockero.com is run out of California, and enjoys greater popularity locally and in nearby cities south of the Mexican border, with limited participation by latinos in the east coast and florida. Their demographic runs from around 15-25 year olds, though advertisements for contests in posted on the site target 18-35 year olds of both genders.

“Virtual communities are cultural aggregations that emerge when enough people bump into each other enough in cyberspace. A virtual community is a group of people that may or may not meet face to face and who exchange words and ideas” (Preece – in class notes)

Preece’s book outlines a couple of points on usability and community building online – specifically stipulations on community governance. Some of the factors of governance / platform that affect the way a community is shaped are: Joining and leaving policies, by-laws, codes of practice, rules of moderation (outlined below), privacy, trust, and privacy.

Yet in rockero as well as many other social networks for latinos that were browsed – as well as much of the blogs and news media the sites fail in many cases to outline what the purpose of the website is. More successfully engaging blogs (gossip, mostly!) do post a statement of purpose – but it is unclear whether participation is due to the nature of the information or the disclaimer. Engagement in rockero is only tangentially music-related. Many of the bands that are routinely featured (Cafe Tacvba, Mana, Jaguares) are latin american supergroups that are as familiar and classic as the rolling stones or the Beatles.

The common experience with this niche music (Latin Rock is highly popular, yet does not quite reach the world mainstream, nor has it permeated world music or the underground network) may be interpreted as common media. Benedict’s writings on imagined communities primarily focused on news media, yet these theories of ‘common experience’ through ‘common messages’ could well apply to music. “Imagined communities were described in class as such because “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, yet in their minds share an image of communion” (Anderson)

The explicit agenda of the community around a certain kind of music is, in my opinion, what distinguishes a page such as Rockero from a platform like Myspace. The media acts as a kind of filter – the community is composed (mainly) of those who are interested or familiar with this genre. It also acts as a kind of ethnic filter – the site is mostly populated by latinos. Even though the forum and the personal pages are by far the most used applications, and though the networking appeal is analogous to that of myspace, rockero’s music front is a source of initial cohesion. In terms of classic identification markers (blood, soil and church) these develop through the implicit quality of the media. The music media provides a platform of common interest. The specific genre, however, provides a common experience, but also denotes a certain identity that precedes registration in the site. It is an identification marker of soil (the roots of the music, and the experience of it) and common blood (la raza latina etc…)

In fact, here are the rules for posting on the forum:

• We encourage debating and discussion between all our members. But rudeness, name-calling, flaming, baiting or personal attacks on others will not be allowed.
• We highly suggest that you do not post personal information about yourself or others, this includes Addresses, Phone Numbers, emails, etc).
• No inappropiate content will be allowed. This includes obscene, vulgar, racist, hateful, pornographic or otherwise inappropiate content.
• Do not post the same topic in more then one forum. This is considered spamming. Select the appropiate forum, and only post it once there. If you are unsure where it goes, put it on the General Discussion forum.
• Advertising, spamming, commercial solicitation and/or trolling is not allowed.
• Do not post events on the forums. If you need us to post your event, email us and we will happily add it to our calendar of events.

Notice that nowhere on this list is there any rules postulating that music is the primary purpose of the community, the forums or any discussion. Common posts look like this:

“ues soy nueva en esto
and learing liitle by little
hablo el ingles y el espanol
pero creo que voy a usar mas el espanol lol
hope to make new friends here
y podemos chatiar”

What is the biggest problem in the world today?

-People who think that global warming isn’t a cycle

– The U.N.

– Overrated managers in baseball i.e. Joe Torre.
– Illiteracy
– the bait and switch technique in sports and other forms of entertainment.
– The bible belts stranglehold on far too many communities.
– The bastard that shot Dimebag.
– George Bush’s spending habits.
– Cinema ticket prices.
– Stale orange juice.
– The calories that are in one single serving of Frosted Flakes.

Participants instead use this platform mostly as a place to profile network (very similarly to myspace) but more surprising and perhaps most interestingly, members may participate in chats (though they rarely do) and post copiously on the forums. Forums feature diverse topics, but they are filled with surprisingly deeply thought-out posts on identity, political and health issue criticisms, discussions on gender, racism and the place of Latinos in American society.

The music forum does not divide under types of discussion so there is a disorganized mass of posts ranging from postings like “Panda Suxxxx A**!!” to analytical queries on what the role of popular music is for the latino youth – and whether rock is ultimately a sellout to mainstream culture. Further many members discuss bands and music that are not Latin (see the ‘purpose’ of the page at the top of this post)

I could not say for sure whether the drift of the community from the creators’ ideas are due to poverty of stimuli (not many new bands are featured), due to a greater pull of social networking through acculturation, or whether it is the failure of developers to create a platform that contains discussion and media to the music they formed to feature.Signing up to the site is “easy and free” (it is… though occasionally spam will mysteriously find its way into your inbox)

The strength of weak ties:

The site’s users may be inicially drawn to the music community and what the music denotes about the demography of the page’s users. Further, most of the users are concentrated in the West Coast and the Northern region of Mexico. The phenomenon of creating opportunities through weak ties can be explored in a number of ways regarding this community: firstly, weak ties are mostly responsible for the site’s registration. Growing numbers of members in the east coast and big midwestern cities show that some drift and word of mouth may account for this membership. In Shoemaker’s view, the diffusion through weak ties (and the implantation of new products in new markets) are crucial and then spread quickly locally. First adopters in localities are responsible for contagion.

More explicitly, since the site is still highly localized, forums and personal pages are used to network. These networking options are usually related to music (searching for musicians, venues), advertising one’s own shows and occasional meetups for concerts. Yet this platform cannot be completely discounted for creating job opportunities: the community does not take weak ties to those opportunities but rather gives them a platform to form and be sustained. It may be argued it creates what Granovetter calls ‘bridges.’ Since the connections made are usually begin as weak ties, and for the most part are unlikely to become strong ties. Strong ties, however, may account for the recruitment of a certain percentage of users into the site, though their recruitment is not strictly due to their strong-tie status: weak ties as well as strong function in information flow. Weak ties are responsible for wide diffusion among strongly bound groups

Since it is explicitly a music networking platform, these bridges are in most cases related to the medium (because of the facets shown by individuals – the knowledge they display). But since connections are made, the possibility is then created to foster different bridging opportunities.

The creation of these possibility ties into Jenny Preece’s ‘more-is-more’ philosophy. More-is-more refers to greater total volume of communication – where total communication increases by using the internet. While the idea that internet communication isolates people has been thrown around, the creation of these connections increases the net number of people in ones network. Further, people who are more networked online are likely to network more by phone as well. Since Latino data shows cell phone usage is widespread in the community, a loose correlation may be inferred.

Networking vs. Media sites: Participation vs. Lurking

Participation in social networking sites are widespread practice for young Latinos, especially those proficient in English, or those more familiar with internet technology (*) While looking around latino blogs and news-sourves (such as LatinoPundit or Hispanic.com) there seemed to be a great disconnect between the reported metrics of visitation – Hispanic news (hispanic.cc) boasts itself as the #1 hispanic website in the U.S, participation is incredibly limited. Blogs have few commentors, if any – and the locus of discourse on immigration and health issues for latinos are mostly run in non-latino media and groups.

For Preece, participation and community building hinges on 4 factors

1)People who interact to satisfy their own needs, perform roles

2)Shared Purpose

3)Policies: protocol, rules, user interaction

4)Computer systems: support/mediation.

Rockero.com has an explicit shared purpose but secures cohesion through direct bond formation (rather than depending on the media they provide – music). Though usability policies are minimal, there are protocols that users abide by. Spamming, sending viruses, insulting others on forums, posting lewd pictures are all community mediated, and to a certain extent mediated by forum administrators. The permanence of the community demonstrates that the community satisfies a need, and fills a niche (though whether it is the music or meeting other rockeros is unclear)

The usability of the site gives members a great deal of control – making ones own pages, participating in threads, etc. The site is, in its own right, very successful in keeping members active. But it is not necessary to be a member to browse through profiles or read the forums. THe only exclusive feature is the internal chat, which no one uses.

Lurking, may then play a part in the sites’ metrics – the site visitation rankings do not seem to coincide with an almost barren platform for interaction (the chat). And interaction took place in forums (where many members are frequent posters) and through personal page browsing. Lurking was discussed in class as presenting a resource in online communities – certainly the hit measurements reveal a demographic hungry for news. A good question to pose would be whether a moderator and experimentation with familiar interaction-boasting platforms would have any effect on how the site is used – or whether quiet news obtaining is a cultural more that has little to do with platform.