September 11 Digital Archive

Chasm in cyberspace widens: Black entrepreneurs continue to fall behind technology curve

Title

Chasm in cyberspace widens: Black entrepreneurs continue to fall behind technology curve

Source

born-digital

Media Type

article

Original Name

Why are black businesses missing from the Internet? The reason is lack of awareness, said Don Rojas,

Created by Author

yes

Described by Author

no

Date Entered

2002-09-01

VTMBH Article: Edition

36

VTMBH Article: Article Order

3

VTMBH Article: Title

Chasm in cyberspace widens: Black entrepreneurs continue to fall behind technology curve

VTMBH Article: Author

Herb Boyd

VTMBH Article: Publication

Network Journal

VTMBH Article: Original Language

English

VTMBH Article: Translator

VTMBH Article: Section

news

VTMBH Article: Blurb

Why are black businesses missing from the Internet? The reason is lack of awareness, said Don Rojas, CEO and founder of The Black World Today. Others discussed the difficulties of recouping ad losses, the economic slump, and strategies for gaining access to computers and e-commerce strategies at the Blacks in Technology summit.

VTMBH Article: Keywords

VTMBH Article: Body

Steve Ballmer knows how to get an audiences attention. When Ballmer, CEO and president of Microsoft Corp., said that less than two percent of African-American entrepreneurs possessed an e-commerce strategy, a loud murmur rippled across the vast auditorium at New Yorks Jacob Javits Convention Center.

With small business a key driver of American economic growth…ethnic small businesses must understand and embrace the new technology that can help them succeed in the digital decade ahead, he said.

Ballmers message was not lost on those attending his keynote address at the two-day Blacks in Technology summit (www.blacksintechnology.com) at the Javits Center. He warned that too many black business people were falling behind the technology curve, thus widening the so-called digital divide in computer literacy and Internet access between whites and ethnic minorities.

In an interview with The Network Journal after his address, Ballmer said Microsoft was working to improve the e-commerce capabilities of minority firms and the access African-Americans have to computers. Overall, we have dispensed some $30 million to minority banks across the nation, and the $9 million I mentioned during my speech is in addition to this sum, he explained.

We must overcome the digital divide in which only 56 percent of African-Americans work on personal computers, compared to 70 percent for white Americans, he said. And our industry is not doing a good job of reaching people.

Ballmers points were accented by a colleague at a workshop at the Blacks in Technology event. By 2004, all government procurement will occur online, noted Martin Taylor, director of business strategy at Microsoft. So its a matter of priorities, and if they dont get online, opportunities will be lost.

According to several black technology experts, these online opportunities will provide an unprecedented amount of potential online sales revenue which is expected to spike at about $60 billion over the next couple of years.

Why are black businesses missing from the Internet? The reason is lack of awareness, said Don Rojas, CEO and founder of The Black World Today (www.tbwt.com), an online news and information center. But the critical issue may be they are not convinced that money can be made on the Internet. They hear all the horror stories about the failure of dot-com companieseven the major onesand this news is obviously very discouraging, he said.

Rojas, whose company has been on the Internet since 1996, spoke at length about the troubles a small, independent business faces trying to survive in cyberspace. And this situation, particularly in the realm of available advertising for minority-owned firms, has taken even a deeper turn for the worst since September 11th, he continued. Despite the gloomy picture, there are still more black businesses building websites and experimenting with this electronic medium, he said.

Increasing awareness of the Internet and its fiscal possibilities were some of the goals of the Blacks in Technology summit, which also made stops in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago. These urban areas were targeted by Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard Co. and other sponsors, who enlisted talk show host Tavis Smiley and his foundation to help spread the word.

We cant be road kill on the information superhighway, Smiley asserted as he moderated a panel of leading African-American authorities on new technologies. He said that in order to close the increasing chasm between the haves and the have-nots, minority businesses cant afford to wait much longer to purchase the tools they need to get online.

How does a business maintain itself once it has a presence on the Internet? Unless you have an inexhaustible amount of risk capital, promotional funds, with considerably endowed sponsors, running a business solely online will be difficult, said Victoria Jackson, an Internet consultant based in Detroit.

Just getting the money owed to you by advertisers through electronic invoicing presents new problems, said Jackson. In short, it just takes you longer to get paid.

During a recent forum sponsored by the National Association of Black Journalists, it was reported that less than half of black newspapers are online. And this figure may be a bit inflated. Id be surprised if a third of them have a presence online, Rojas observed. Part of the problem for new people on the Internet is fear of being lost in the shuffle or else they are bothered by what they feel is a complexity of technology.

VTMBH Article: Line Breaks

1

VTMBH Article: Date

2002-09-01

VTMBH Article: Thumb

VTMBH Article: Article File

VTMBH Article: Hit Count

150

Citation

“Chasm in cyberspace widens: Black entrepreneurs continue to fall behind technology curve,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed November 14, 2024, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/1555.