Loretta Chao – The Wall Street Journal, 02/03/2013
SÃO PAULO—When Barbosa family members botched their cover of an old Brazilian gospel song last year on a family video, they thought it was pretty funny—funny enough to upload to YouTube.
But they didn’t expect the rest of Brazil to laugh along with them. Within weeks, though, the video was viewed and shared millions of times on YouTube and Facebook FB -5.77% . Parodies, including an animated version in which the Simpsons lip-sync the family’s mangled version, spread across the Internet.
The popularity of the Barbosas’ performance reflects the growth of social media in Latin America’s biggest country. Brazil’s expanding middle class is increasingly going online, and social media are particularly popular because of Brazil’s hyper-social culture, social-media executives say.