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Battle's on for Web's black home base

 
Published Oct. 8, 2000|Updated Sept. 28, 2005

BET.com and BlackPlanet.com want to be No. 1 for black Internet users, but research shows race may not be a deciding factor for those who use the Web.

While some people spent much Internet time over the past few months discussing who would be the next person kicked off Survivor island, people on http://www.BET.com's forums were tackling weightier implications of reality-based shows: how they portrayed black contestants.

"Whenever I watch these shows I'm just waiting to see when the brother is going to snap and get kicked off," one message read.

"I don't feel that the producers of these shows are trying to stereotype racial issues and how African Americans relate to whites," another person wrote.

Black people are rapidly going online, and sites such as BET.com are trying to lure those new users by creating places on the Internet specifically aimed at them.

The 7-month-old BET.com, part of the media empire that includes Black Entertainment Television, is one of the two top black-oriented Web sites, along with year-old http: //www.BlackPlanet.com. Both average about 300,000 unique visitors a month, according to sampling by Media Metrix. America Online and Microsoft sites, in contrast, have more than 50-million unique visitors a month.

BlackPlanet.com is one of the "stickiest" sites around, however, with an average of 142.9 minutes spent per visitor per month on the site, according to Media Metrix. That puts it in fourth place overall. BET.com visitors spend an average of 15.6 minutes on the site every month.

While BET.com is an Internet portal offering news, forums, chat and e-mail that tries to project a somewhat intellectual vibe appealing to middle-class professionals, BlackPlanet.com offers similar features but is "less like a library and more like a cafe," says executive director Omar Wasow.

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BlackPlanet.com, which requires users to register, is known for its meat-market atmosphere in which people come up with naughty user names and go to the site in search of an online hookup.

Wasow points out that chat rooms on other Internet services, such as America Online, also tend to be flirtatious.

In fact, there's also a contingent of BlackPlanet users who put together religious home pages and participate in religion-centered chats. Others set up an identity on BlackPlanet in an attempt to network.

According to Wasow, one of BlackPlanet's big contributions has been putting the power of the Internet in the hands of black Web surfers. Everyone who joins BlackPlanet gets a home page, and it's up to each person as to how sophisticated the page gets.

"BlackPlanet has sort of become a base camp for African Americans to explore the whole Web," Wasow says.

Ekaterina Walsh, senior analyst for Forrester Research, a technology research company, says race is not the major factor in determining how people use the Internet.

Most of the differences in how people use the Internet depend on the user's age, income, education and optimism about technology. Older people, regardless of race, might use the Internet just to send e-mail while younger people of all races are more likely to be more active on the Internet, using it for a number of purposes and in more sophisticated ways.

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Walsh predicts that sites that bank on simply targeting a particular ethnic group, such as BlackPlanet.com, are not going to be very successful. She thinks BET.com has a better chance of making it because it has an established name and identity away from the Internet.

"BET is going to be much more successful because it has this very established legacy," she said.

Black people are more likely than other groups to seek health and career information online, Walsh said. "They don't need a black portal to do that," she said. "They can go to a health site that is trusted in that area."

Jehucal Forbes, 21, a Broward County Community College sophomore, spends at least part of every day logged into BlackPlanet.com.

He says he switched to BlackPlanet from Hotmail because of the features it offered.

"You can make your own page, design your own page. You can chat with more people," he said.

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While neither BET.com nor BlackPlanet.com has turned a profit, executives for both sites say they're on their way to profitability.

BlackPlanet and BET.com are both convinced that one black-oriented Web site will dominate, and each is determined that it will be the top dog.

"I think there's a lot of pressure to be the definitive Web site," Wasow said. "Like the broader Web, there will be one or two dominant (black) sites and then a lot of niche sites."

Wasow said traditional media companies such as BET "don't really get how you succeed on the Web." But BET.com's vice president of content development, Retha Hill, said having the traditional media company backing the site is going to be the key to success.

"I think we are the definitive African-American Web site," Hill said. "We know there will be No. 1 and then down the road back behind the block will be No. 2."