Beating the tidal wave
The mid-1990s was a time of
rapid Internet content growth in Latin America. Sites covering everything
from entertainment to news to government information were popping
up everywhere. With these sites came the inevitable emergence of
regional portal sites – Terra, El Sitio, StarMedia. During
the Internet heyday, each of these portal companies hoped to created
an empire with their own portals in leading the market in every
Latin American country.
In 1997, the tidal wave of big portal companies had yet to hit
Uruguay. In fact, no one had yet stepped forward to do the important
work of creating a portal that Uruguayans could call home. Seeing
this gap – and wanting to be ahead of the wave – Victor
Escardó decided to take action. He created
UruguayTotal, a country portal run by Uruguayans for Uruguayans.
Once the site was established, Victor sold it to ITeM, a research
NGO and owner of Uruguay’s non-profit Internet service provider
(Chasque). ITeM set UruguayTotal up as a private company and hired
Victor as the editor in chief. In dot com terms, this private /
non-profit partnership is a strange one. Yet it provided a perfect
platform for the pursuit of UruguayTotal’s mission of producing
a locally run portal with a strong Uruguayan character.
Of course, the tidal wave of foreign run portals eventually hit.
All three of the major Latin American portal companies had
set up shop in Uruguay by then end of the 1990s. Working hard to
hold its ground against these competitors, UruguayTotal stressed
the local character of its site. For example, a new slate of Uruguayan
artists and cultural NGOs were added as information partners on
the site. This ‘emphasize the local’ approach has been
key in helping UruguayTotal last out its competitors and remain
the number one portal site in the country.
Information – a home away from home
UruguayTotal started out with the most standard of portal fare
– a high quality, categorized list of web sites. While simple,
this approach met the pent up need for a search engine and directory
that covered Uruguayan information. The information included in
the directory was collected and written up by Uruguayans who understood
what was interesting and important to others in their country. It
is this foundation of high quality site reviews on which UruguayTotal’s
popularity was built and maintained.
Of course, UruguayTotal has become much more than a links and search
engine site. The current version of the site includes a bookstore,
national events listings and a section devoted to movies and entertainment
– Cartelera. Cartelera is particularly noteworthy. In addition
to the standard information one might expect –movie listings,
restaurant reviews, art gallery openings – it also includes
a comprehensive Latin American movie database (Cinestrenos). Similar
in approach to the Internet Movie Database, Cinestrenos includes
information about every film released in Uruguay since 1929 –
including many Latin American films that do not show up in other
online movie databases.
In response to user demand, and with some trepidation, UruguayTotal
added discussion boards in early 2001. Site staff were concerned
that these boards would quickly degrade into the banal chatter about
pop stars and trivia that dominate discussion forums on most other
portals. However, this is exactly the opposite of what has happened.
UruguayTotal’s forums are more often than not a platform for
intelligent discussion, with recent posts covering everything from
racism to national politics to violence against women to the Uruguayan
justice system.
A big factor in the success of the forums – and of the site
as a whole – is the interest and involvement of Uruguayans
living in other countries. For these people, UruguayTotal is an
information home away from home. As such, the forums are not just
idle chat but rather a way for people to connect with their roots.
Reviewing a recent thread on racism in Uruguay,
there were postings from Uruguayans living in the United States
and countries across Latin America.
Commercial, non-commercial?
On the surface, the business model for UruguayTotal looks just
like any other commercial portal. The site generates income from
three major sources –banner ads, ecommerce and content syndication
(e.g. selling entertainment listings to the national telephone company).
Additional revenue comes from the sale of web site development services
to Uruguayan companies.
However, there are some major differences between UruguayTotal
and other commercial portals, especially when in comes to ownership.
Ninety percent of the company is owned by the Third World Institute
(ITeM) – the NGO that houses non-profit Internet provider
Chasque. Staff and office space are shared with Chasque, creating
economies of scale and facilitating the flow of values between the
two operations. As a result, Chasque is more entrepreneurial than
most non-profits and UruguayTotal is more publicly minded than other
commercial portals.
With this mixed commercial / non-commercial model, UruguayTotal
operates much like an independent, public media outlet than a dot
com portal. The site is definitely not a direct reflection of political
opinions of its owners (there are strict ‘balance’ policies
in place at UruguayTotal). However, it does have a mandate that
goes beyond making money -- ensuring that Uruguayans can find information
and stories that reflect their own unique needs and reality. As
there are no private shareholders to satisfy, it can continue with
this mandate as long as it continues to break even (which it does).
And, as an added bonus, any future profitability can be channelled
back into the even more civically-minded work of Chasque and ITeM.
Small team, big impact
One of the ‘secrets’ to UruguayTotal’s financial
sustainability has been staying small. Portals and other web businesses
around the world have started up with dozens of staff and all kinds
of fancy equipment – and most of them have gone broke. In
contrast, UruguayTotal operates with the equivalent of about one
and a half staff (spread over various different people) and continues
to break even year after year.
The big question is: how does a site like UruguayTotal continue
to deliver high quality information with so few resources? There
are a number of factors:
· Expertise and commitment – staff know the Uruguayan
information landscape intimately and are committed to creating a
high quality site.
· Outsourcing and syndication – many of the more labour
intensive information tasks such as writing feature articles are
outsourced or handled through content feeds from other providers.
· Automation and technology – keeping the site ‘running’
is mostly a matter of making sure the computers don’t go down.
Most of the site is automated using databases that allow editors
and others to post their content without the help of technical staff.
UruguayTotal’s loyal users also play a major role in ensuring
that the site is of the highest quality possible. Users regularly
write with corrections and comments. UruguayTotal staff respond
to every message, giving users a feeling that there are ‘humans
behind the site’ and encouraging future feedback and comments.
Tech to fit the task
As with many other portals started in the mid-to-late 1990s, UruguayTotal
began with its own hand-rolled content management tools. Most of
the site including the links, movies and ecommerce databases were
built from scratch by staff technicians using a combination of Perl,
PHP and MySQL. As it moves forward, UruguayTotal is considering
the shift towards more standard applications like the Gossamer Threads
Links SQL directory management package.
Future plans
UruguayTotal’s non-profit owners are committed to strengthening
and growing the site over the long haul. At present, the site’s
daily visitor numbers outstrip the newsstand sales of the country’s
biggest newspaper. And, if you mention UruguayTotal to any Uruguayan
Internet user, they will know exactly what you are talking about.
The people who run the site are proud that this kind of attention
is being focused on a site that is run by Uruguayans for Uruguayans
Beyond the broad political importance of the site, the staff and
owners also see long the long-term profit potential for UruguayTotal.
The site is becoming the only game in town when it comes to Internet
portals in Uruguay. As a result, advertisers who want to be online
will eventually have to turn to UruguayTotal. If this happens, it
may be possible to generate enough profit to help underwrite the
good work such as Chasque’s efforts to provided strategic
Internet tools to non-profits organizations.
In the short term, however, the top priority for UruguayTotal is
survival. Uruguay has been stuck in a recession for at least four
years and there is no immediate end in sight. As a result, running
a business based on the sale of advertising and information is a
difficult proposition. Nonetheless, staff at UruguayTotal are convinced
that they can weather this storm and remain the top portal in the
country. If they can do this, long term potential for the site is
incredible.
This case study was written by Mark Surman of The Commons Group.
Mark is a leading consultant, researcher and advocate who promotes
the strategic use of technology by non-profit organizations.
© APC 2002 – Distributed as OPL Open Content
http://opencontent.org/opl.shtml
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