This week in social media, Facebook took a victory lap on Wall Street, while Twitter's earnings next week look to be disappointing. Also disappointing, but not surprising, were the diversity figures released this week by Twitter and Pinterest.
Amid slow economic growth and a housing market that hasn't fully recovered, U.S.-born Latinos have accounted for the majority of U.S. Hispanic job gains.
Google may have released unflattering diversity figures recently (in a move that at least got the conversation started about the lack of minorities in Silicon Valley), but the tech giant is at least trying to bring about change. One initiative, a continuing partnership with Latino startup incubator Manos Accelerator, has just announced its second round of startups for its program.
Google released information about the diversity of its workforce, and the news isn't very positive. Most of the giant company's workforce is made up of white men. There is a positive side to the story though, as Google is at least acknowledging the problem with full transparency, which the National Hispanic Media Coalition says is the first step towards an "honest conversation" about the lack of diversity in tech.
As we've previously reported, Latinos are one of the fastest growing demographics in the U.S. and, as consumers, have widely been considered "ahead of the digital curve." But Latinos are still vastly underrepresented in future-forward careers and educational fields associated with high-tech, which will be the focus of a panel discussion at the Latino Education and Advocacy Days summit at Cal State this year.
On Wednesday, Rev. Jesse Jackson decided to call attention to the tech industry's diversity problem by writing an open letter to Silicon Valley giants and leading a delegation to Hewlett-Packard's shareholders meeting.
AT&T's HACEMOS, a Hispanic/Latino Association hosted its annual National High Technology Day across the U.S. on Thursday to help get Latino and other minority high school students excited about careers in high-tech fields.
Stanford and UC Berkeley joined forces with UC Los Angeles and the California Institute of Technology, forming the California Alliance for Education and Professoriate (CAEP). In partnership, the institutions, intend to tackle minority under-representation in math and science Ph.D. programs, and in faculty positions.
While Latinos remain underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs and professions in the U.S., Puerto Rico is having a different sort of problem: U.S. recruiters are stealing away with Puerto Rican STEM graduates. But the island's government is trying to end the brain drain, using LinkedIn as a tool.
Monolingual Latino students in the Cleveland area are getting a chance to develop their science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skill with a new program that promotes high-tech education for Spanish-speaking students.
