The Tampa Tribune from Tampa, Florida • 28

technology Women's Wire gets serious about business A Knight-Ridder report The World Wide Web has waves of women-oriented sites available for those venturing out to surf. A good place to start, as always, is with a search engine. Femina: Latin For Woman at http:www.femina.com is an excellent launching point into this wide world. Set up like a Yahoo! for women, it features both a keyword search function and a set of topic areas that can be browsed. Publications, politics, organizations, business and finance, computers and science it's all there for the clicking.

Another good launch point to other things (and an interesting site all by itself) is Aliza Sherman's Cybergrrl at cybergrii.comcg.html A little tired of the somewhat restrained irreverence at sites like Women's Wire? Try Bitch at http:www.subvox.combitch or gURL at http:www.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu gURL or, if you're into irreverent to the point of out of control, you can dive into Heartless Bitches International we don't name them; we just point you there at http:www.heartless-bitches.com Also of interest: Women (at) Work, the Web site for the National Association for Female Executives: http:www.nafe.com Women in Technology: witi. com Woman Motorist: west, netweb pageswmindex. shtml Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing: http:www.research.digital. comnslhopperinfo.html National Organization for Women: http:now.orgnowhome.html Women's Health Interactive: Guerrilla Girls (feminist art): voyagerco. comgggg.

html wire stories, original art, photographs and "do tell" feedback forums on topics "ranging from Barbie to Bosnia," Pack said. Women's Wire advice columnists answer questions ranging from relationships and fashion to careers and personal finance. Women's Wire has the atmosphere of a traditional woman's magazine poking fun at itself. It revels in inviting visitors to make fun of tradition, too. Rather than stocking up on photos and video clips of stick-thin fashion models shimmying down a runway in barely-there bikinis, Women's Wire invites visitors to make fun of the entire idea along with them.

"Everything we do has a sense of humor," Pack said. "The Web is an entertainment medium as much as anything. People are surfing to see what's up, and we're trying to tell them." THEY MUST BE SUCCEEDING. Women's Wire has won recognition from most of the major rating services on the World Wide Web and has ranked among the top 10 favorite sites listed on the Web 100 for nearly three months running. Advertisers are taking notice.

Beginning with Levi's just five months ago, more than a dozen big-name companies, from cosmetics makers to banks and car companies, have signed on. Women's World collected over $100,000 in advertising revenue in both June and July, up from just $47,000 in May, according to WebTrack AdSpend. That's enough to rank them among the Web's 25 biggest advertising outlets. McDaniel has brought in $5 million in backing from individual investors and venture capital firms. A new parent company, Wire Networks, has been formed, and extra office space adjacent to the existing Women's Wire facility has been nabbed.

The way is now cleared for what McDaniel and Pack see as an inevitable expansion into new cyberprojects. It's possible, they say, that Women's Wire will go public at some point. "It's a little early to know," McDaniel said. "We think the Internet is really still in its infancy but it's already a huge baby. It's like a puppy with big feet." Which is a bit like Women's Wire itself.

LAST FALL, WOMEN'S WIRE abandoned its bulletin board service, urging subscribers instead to join a new women's forum on CompuServe. Two-thirds of them did, Pack said. The other one-third, however, did not surrender their community quietly. The metamorphosis of Women's Wire enraged and saddened scores of people who had come to think of it as their special place in cyberspace. "We still miss it so much," said Aliza Sherman, a charter Women's Wire subscriber and now president and founder of Cybergrrl Internet Media Inc.

in New York. "We found great, great friends, many of whom we never met face-to-face. They helped me through some terrible times. It was truly a support network." Rhine, still hoping to create a lasting community of online women, left Women's Wire to help America Online develop its women-oriented content. "This medium is brand new and the field is wide open and we're all experimenting and watching it change so rapidly and constantly," Rhine said.

"We can't get hung up on things from the past. We're all moving forward and exploring." The address for Women's Wire is women.com When Ellen Pack and Nancy Rhine first ventured into the online world several years ago, they found no there there. There was a lot of technical lingo, plenty of science and medical discussion groups, a few things for sports enthusiasts, and a smattering of political discussion. But there was nothing specifically about, by or for women, and no clear way for women to "connect." So four years ago they opened an office and created Women's Wire, originally an old-fashioned dial-up service like America Online or Prodigy where subscribers could e-mail one another, check out topical forums or conduct lively chats on myriad topics. More than 1,500 women, and quite a few men, signed up for the service, and it appeared poised to grow even more.

But 1,500 subscribers represented scarcely a few moment's "hits" on some of today's more popular World Wide Web pages. Running an independent service for so few people simply wasn't economically feasible. So Women's Wire looked to the Web for its future. A convulsive upheaval ripped apart its fledgling cybercommunity, and ended Pack's and Rhine's partnership; the Web publication that emerged in its place has become one of the most frequented sites on the Internet. Women's Wire gets more than 7.5 million hits a month now, representing roughly 300,000 individual visitors, said president and chief executive officer Marleen McDaniel, who joined Women's Wire in 1994 and has overseen its transition to the Web.

The pages are an irreverent and light-hearted stew of original content written and designed by Women's Wire employees and freelancers mixed with repackaged Reuters Source: Knight-Ridder ARE YOU DROWNING i IN STUDENT LOAN DEBT? WE CAN HELP! FREDERICK T. LOWE ESO, PA (813 287-1001 Superior Home Care of Florida, Inc. For the recovering handicapped and elderly we provide: Jb Personal Assistance Caiusat I RHiun art A Urtmom-alfmrr Hi i Hoc Meal Preparation WlmH Medication Reminders (800)361-6078 dfc Caretaker Relief We are a bonded insured agency. FL Reg. 105028 By recycling office materials, you could reduce your garbage bills.

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