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Home, Sweet Home Page: Women on the Internet

Last April, advertisers and marketers met in Chicago to talk about their favorite subject: how to get your money. The "Targeting the Online Woman" conference spent two days hawking the power of online networks to reach "the most influential consumer in the world." Isn't this a pip? First I say that cyberspace is great, then I tell you that crass commercialism will be there to greet you.

If I were you, I'd take it as a compliment. What it means is that everyone from Godiva chocolates to AT&T respects your presence in cyberspace. They expect you to be there. And the numbers back them up.

A recent report from Forrester Research, Inc. says that over the next three years, the number of U.S. women online will grow from about 5 million to more than 18 million. Working women will get online the fastest, but college women and educated mothers at home will pump up their presence as well.

The flurry of financial interest proves that women are getting into cyberspace faster than you can say, "Charge it." So let's learn how to stroll through the Internet. Apart from using E-mail and ordering chocolates from the comfort of your chaise longue (but where else does one use one's laptop PC?), you'll be tapping the Internet primarily for news and information. To find out what you want to know and where it's coming from, understand your URLs.

Huh?

Let's back up. The Internet, complex as it may seem, actually has very few rules-among them, a single convention for locating its plentiful resources. If you've seen any lengthy URL --a Uniform Resource Locator --here's how it breaks down:

http://www.younameit.org

HTTP stands for hyper text transfer protocol, the computerized handshakes that let the Internet transfer readable files, as long as they are coded in a programming language called "hypertext." Programmers and Web "home page" (the main or cover file of a site) designers mark up files in HTML (hypertext markup language) by inserting special codes into a document for, say, headlines, paragraph indents and italicized words. You can do it too, with a bit of training or a manual.

I don't know about the colon and the slashes. It's a programming thing. And even though the periods look like periods, you have to call them dots.

WWW stands for-you got it, the World Wide Web. The Web is the fastest-growing part of the Internet, the sites that include pictures, sound, animation and much more. Because colorful images that dance and sing are more appealing than green-on-black text, the Web has captured the world's imagination. It's also turning the Internet into a commercial medium complete with billboards and customer surveys.

YOUNAMEIT is the organization or site name. Most names are pretty obvious-for example, http://www.cocacola.com and http://www.unicef.org. These days, Internet fanciers are all a-flutter about how the Internet governing body sells off names. In fact, enterprising wholesalers have snapped up thousands of desirable names in hopes of re-selling them at a steep profit.

ORG is a domain name. Domains are like virtual fiefdoms for different industries. Non-profit organizations have ORG sites; they are where you might find your local child advocacy coalition, a cancer support group or a house of worship. COM sites are commercial; you see their URLs pop up in ads everywhere. GOV stands for government-did you know that http://www.whitehouse.gov is one of the most popular sites on the Web? EDU is for educational organizations, so you can look up your kids' prospective colleges at http://www.wecanneveraffordit.edu (just kidding). Military sites are tagged MIL and network resources are NET.

So that's it; it all boils down to name and type. And now that you know how to decipher the names of Web sites, what's in them for women? Everything that's in them for men. Plus specialized areas found to be or hoped to be of interest to women both on private services such as America Online and Prodigy, and on the World Wide Web itself. For direct access to the Web, you can dial into the Internet itself and use "browser" software (such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Explorer) to see Web sites as they were meant to be seen.

The Web offers terrific resources on everything from women's small business (http://www.sbaonline.sba.gov/womeninbusiness) to women in cyberspace (try http://www.dcwebwomen.org). A site at http://www.femina.com takes you to women's Web resources on everything from Politics (congresswomen, women in politics, issues and actions) to Family & Motherhood (pregnancy, birth, parenting, family resources, genealogy) to Sports & Fitness (women athletes, women's teams, personal training). Organized groups such as DCWebWomen offer job leads, technical advice and moral support to women working hard to make their mark in this new medium.

And as we women make our mark-and we will -- let's stay alert to all those flashing online ads and marketing blitzes. If the trend holds and we find ourselves en masse in cyberspace, maybe then the world will take our brains as seriously as it does our buying power.

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