It all started in a tweet. After Mexican President Felipe Calderón announced his tax package proposal for 2010 last month, which among other things suggested taxing telecommunications with a 4 percent tax for considering them “a luxury,” Alejandro Pisanty, a professor of UNAM in sabbatical leave and Chair of the Mexican chapter of the Internet Society, decided to write a statement against it and posted on his blog. On it, Pisanty raised the rejection of the tax and suggested using the phrase “Internet Necesario” (Necessary Internet) in all further assertions that were related to this concern.

“Alejandro came to me and ask me to support him and to help him spreading this initiative,” says León Felipe Sánchez, Intellectual Property attorney who also drafted a bill for the Protection of the Rights of Internet Users that is currently in the Senate. And so he did. On October 19 Sánchez wrote the first tweet that was marked under the #internetnecesario hash tag and “it turned out to spread like wildfire because the malaise pushed people to identify themselves immediately with the rejection and began using the label.” He did not think on doing it through Facebook only because he uses Twitter more often but apparently the immediacy of this platform resulted very effective.

In two weeks, 12 thousand users participated in the protest and sent more than 100 thousand tweets with the hash tag, which for Mexico’s Internet users –around 21 per cent of the total population according to gapminder.org- was quite an achievement. Interestingly enough, although there were several thousands of tweets on the subject, #internetnecesario didn’t become a Tweeter Trend, which was understood by many as reflect of the anglocentrism of the platform.

Two days after Sánchez´s tweet on October 21, the Commission on Science and Technology of the Senate, for which he is a consultant in Intellectual Property, hosted a round table debate with some of the members of the Internet user’s community to hear their arguments about the disadvantages that would have taxing telecommunications.

“I found it very interesting to see how concerned citizens were able to attract the attention of the Senate in a matter of days to address an issue that concerned us,” says Francisco Alanis, a radio anchor and one of Mexico´s most “followed” people on Twitter. “We are normally accustomed to seeing politicians only speaking to other politicians and citizen proposals being ignored unless streets are closed, more drastic measures are taken or represent a big chunk for their parties.”

The debate showed the importance of the Internet Necesario movement, which in Sánchez opinion lies in that it went from a virtual to the real protest in an orderly manner, with reasoning and foundations, without blocking streets, excesses, anything.

But the movement did not stopped there. On November 1 some of the organizers called for Internet users to gather at Parque Hundido in Mexico City and some other spots around the country to take a massive picture to continue stressing the importance of the Internet. “I don’t usually complain but this was peaceful demonstration against a tax that would take away people’s opportunity to take part of their education in their own hands. And even worse in a country where formal education is so bad,” says Federico Casas, one of the participants.

The Internet Necesario movement not only caught the attention of legislators and other political actors who realized that “things are not like they used to and that there are sectors of civil society, without any political tags or parties, and a plethora of opinions and positions that are watching and demanding accountability. They cannot continue to do things at their discretion,” states Sanchez.

But also, and most importantly for the purpose of the movement itself, it achieved to curb the tax Internet services when purchased independently. In the case of Internet packages that include cable and telephone services it succeeded on exempting up to 30% per cent of the total bill.

However, the implications of this initiative that according to its organizers was meant to remain among friends, go far beyond. “In Mexico we’re used to being a passive society,” says Alanis, “we always complain but hardly take the initiative to act in the way that was done in this case. That´s the greatest lesson of Internet Needed, that we understood that it was time to stop waiting for a great messiah who will work for people before for his party, because he simply does not exist!”

It is estimated that there are around 32 thousand Twitter users in Mexico of which about 8 thousand are active members who made the #internetnecesario movement a success. People’s reaction toward this initiative that according to Sánchez was meant to remain among friends, caught everyone by surprise. For the first time in Mexico, civil society and politicians realized that there is a virtual sphere in which people can organize without needing a political leader, and that goes beyond their jurisdiction.  It seems very likely that from now on things will never be as they used to.

More for less

According to some of the members of Internet Necesario, Mexico is one of the countries with the most expensive Internet service relative to the speed offered.

Like many developing countries, Mexico is lagging behind the technological and digital revolution. Only around 20 percent of the population has Internet access, and about 28 percent doesn’t even have a computer. However this trend has been changing and more and more people, particularly youth, are using various platforms and social networks, and have demonstrated interest to do so on a regular basis.

This was the case for Oscar Alarcón, 29, who has been captivated by the Internet since he bought his first computer in 1998. “I was struck by how the Internet worked and I started to figure out how to program websites and learn some of the technologies that this involved,” he says.

Having studied international business, Alarcón sought work in the Mexican Foreign Trade Council and was forced to shelve his interest for communications. However, when he joined the NGO Rostros y Voces he was able to incorporate this hobby into his work.

“In Rostros y Voces we did not pay much attention to our website,” recalls Ximena Maroto, former program official. “It was not user friendly at all and did not have a lot of our main content. However, when we formalized the area, we began to see a big improvement.”

When Alarcón first joined Rostros he was in charge of the coordination of information technologies focused on education projects for isolated indigenous communities. But the project was thwarted due to a problem with Intel, who was the funder, and it was then when they placed him in the Communications area. “I started taking some initiatives, particularly on the website, which was a vital tool but was very neglected,” Alarcón explains.

After redefining roles and communication strategies, they decided to invest a lot of money in the website and start developing a new one. At the same time, the boom of social networks in Mexico was taking place. “By then I already had an MSN space and MySpace so I thought that if we use these things people would get to know our work more.”

Without being asked, Alarcón began creating accounts with several of them. The same with YouTube and Flickr, which proved very useful as many of the funders asked to see some pictures and videos about their work but it was very difficult to send them everything by email. This need evolved into an opportunity, and Alarcón began integrating these tools into the website.

After it was determined that Rostros y Voces would become part of the Oxfam International confederation a year ago, they started reviewing the online strategy. “We used flash on our website, which was very static, and a couple of animations but the way it was programmed did not allow us to have it up to date. So we then started using a system of content management that allows us to share information with our Facebook and MySpace accounts.”

In this second stage, Oxfam Mexico, formerly Rostros y Voces, incorporated the use of Facebook and Twitter. They began using them shortly before the so-called “boom,” but initially they found that they were  ”elitist”, due to the fact that both their interfaces were only in English, hence the access was “naturally” restricted to a population with higher education levels and a higher economic status.

But even with this “restriction,” the response, mostly on Facebook, has been massive. “More and more people adhere to our network and help us to spread the word about events, publications and causes,” says Oscar. Until now, “Facebook has been the best we have certainly had, but it is too time consuming and demanding in terms of monitoring.”

At this stage of change at Oxfam, after making the rebranding of everything involving the NGO, they are using a more efficient content manager that allows them to link the website with other tools, and integrate the content to their accounts on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and so forth through RSS feeds.

Aside from these social networks, they’ve been broadcasting a radio program by AM for a year now that they decided to record and turn it into a podcast as well using podomatic.com. “We upload it every week, which has helped us measuring the impact and interest that each program arouses among the audience,” he explains.

Given that the dynamics change so quickly in the media and the consequent need for  more dynamic content, they are thinking about radically changing the way they do the podcast and turning the 1 hour program into a 15 minute one so they can list it on iTunes as well. They also want to share it with the online community radio websites of some NGO’s that are close to Oxfam Mexico.

They also maintain two blogs, both in Blogger. One of them is devoted to institutional issues, and the other one serves as a complement to the radio program. It  allows for interaction and feedback from the audience, although participation is very low.
It is worth mentioning that they not only use the tools to share their content, but also as marketing tools; as a kind of measuring instrument to gauge the success of the content and which kinds of content create the most impact. And they can do so through the interaction with the audience and with the tracking tools that each platform offers.

“Not only has the website improved significantly, although now with all the changes remains somewhat incomplete, but Rostros y Voces has been able to improve fundraising in addition to improving information spreading,” sustains Maroto.

For a Mexican NGO such use of technology and digital platforms is very impressive. It could be argued that they are not any NGO, as they’ve become part of Oxfam International. However, it is clear that taking advantage of these tools depends more on the knowledge and interest of those in charge than on the amount of resources that the NGO can spend on it. In this particular case, it depended on Oscar Alarcón´s eagerness to incorporate his two passions into his work. And it’s needless to say he achieved his goal.

Some interesting findings

After having used Hi5 and Facebook, Oscar Alarcón describes some of their findings, that there are two large segments of users of the main social networks in Mexico:

1) By age.

Facebook serves the needs of an older audience range that begins at age 14. Hi5 is the “first social network” people usually get, so the average age is between 12 until 15 or 16 years old, which is the age when we noticed the “migration to Facebook.”

2) By socio-economic level.

Facebook also serves a population of a higher socio-economic level than that of Hi5, especially due to what has been discussed above about each interface´s language. By not offering many interaction tools (ie. Facebook chat), Hi5 does not demand as much time online as Facebook does, which enables use at a cyber café. This presents an advantage in relation to the cost of maintaining a Facebook account for those who do not have a computer or Internet access at their home.

Some other tools they have been using

isssu.com It is an online PDF viewer that is quite appealing visually and helps us save bandwidth and also helps organize the PDF we need to share.

cooliris.com It is a flash photo viewer platform, which is nice and clean but nothing else.

Vimeo.com We use this platform interchangeably to YouTube. The advantage is that it presents a much cleaner interface to the user.