Digital Divide & CONQUER.

LATIN FOOD, MUSIC, and fashion are hot, hot, hot in the U.S. and ethnic marketers know they can't go wrong playing to this growing demographic. Now Internet access providers also have reason to pay attention to minority consumers. Not only do Latino communities continue to outpace population growth in the general population, they--along with Asians--are the fastest growing group online.

According to a new report by Insight Research (Parsippany, NJ), Internet penetration rates for Hispanics and Asians in America will grow several times faster than that of the rest of the population over the next five years. By 2005, U.S. ethnic groups will spend $3.1 billion on Internet access, an amount nearly equal to the billion total U.S. Internet access market in the year 2000.

The report advises Web portal, Internet, and IP telephony providers to develop "affinity portals" based on demographics such as gender and race to differentiate themselves from all-purpose portals. Such community-based sites, Insight's researchers argue, attract the loyalty of users currently disenfranchised by generic portals and help bridge the digital--really more of a cultural--divide.