Wichita ? Julio Guerra, a 20-year-old Wichitan, really wants to be your friend – if you’re young, Hispanic and on MySpace.com.

Guerra, who works as an operations manager at a hair salon and at a furniture store, joined the online social networking site about a month ago.

His goal now is to add all young Wichita Hispanics on MySpace to his friends list.

In October, he started sending messages to the approximately 500 Hispanics he found on MySpace within 20 miles of ZIP code 67212. So far he has about 100 “friends.”

Over time, he wants to branch out to other cities.

“If I eventually get all of the United States, that’s great,” he said.

In 2003, Hispanics became the largest minority group in the country. In Wichita, their numbers have increased from 9.6 percent of the population in 2000 to 12.1 percent in 2005, according to U.S. Census data.

For Guerra, it’s about making friends and filling a gap that exists in Wichita.

Once he has enough local MySpace friends, he wants to bring them together for real-world social events. While Guerra, a Venezuela native and permanent U.S. resident, started with people of his ethnicity, he’d welcome anyone.

“In Miami you have Little Havana; in New York you have Puerto Ricans; in Wichita it’s the North Side,” he said. “If you don’t venture out of that world, you’re going to stay in that world.”