Quepasa.com-Spanish-language web sites target Hispanics.

Defying lackluster PC marketing efforts to Latinos and a widely acknowledged digital divide, Spanish-language Internet portals and service providers are sprouting at a zesty pace, vying aggressively for investment capital, advertising dollars and the eyes of an increasingly influential market. While dominant rival portals such as Yahoo! and long-established Internet service providers such as Prodigy attempt to build on their traditional English-speaking customer bases by translating to Spanish, the dedicated Latino sites are working overtime to build large national and international communities by appealing to home-grown sensibilities and tastes. "Yupi.com is built by Hispanics and owned by Hispanics," said Carlos Cardona, founder and chief technology officer of Yupi.com, a Miami Beach-based portal company. Much is at stake. Though estimates vary on how much Latinos are being courted, Hispanic Business magazine says that American companies spent $1.7 billion to advertise to the U.S. Hispanic community last year, mostly on television. Although only a fraction of that was spent on Internet ads, that_s expected to change rapidly as the 13 million U.S. Spanish households and 2.3 million small businesses get online. The most visible Spanish-language portals have large international audiences, feeding on increased PC penetration in Latin America and on U.S. communities eager to communicate with them. The link could prove a potent advertising tool-as long as the portals can differentiate among their audiences. Like all things Internet, the race is on among Spanish-language portals to raise capital to outgrow the competition, regardless of cost. This year, StarMedia Network, whose business plan initially targeted the broader Latin American market, filed for an initial public offering, and has since expanded its base to the U.S. Hispanic market. In April, Quepasa.com, a service based in Phoenix and serving primarily the Hispanic-American market, filed its initial public offering and has been expanding and advertising to build its base. Other high-profile companies like Yupi.com, eHola and Latinolink.com hint at similar capital interests. Although companies cite the Latino community as the fastest-growing population base online, the numbers collide with U.S. Commerce Department estimates that say Latinos on the whole remain a digitally excluded demographic. Latino households, for instance, are "still roughly half as likely to own a computer as white households, and nearly 2.5 times less likely to use the Internet," according to the Commerce Department study completed in July titled "Falling Through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide."