Zonai.com: New portal targets Puerto Rican Internet users.

A new portal -- www.zonai.com -- serves Puerto Rican Internet users in Puerto Rico, the United States and other nations. Launched in January by the island's leading Internet company, Virtual Inc., an affiliate of El Nuevo Dia, the largest newspaper in Puerto Rico, www.zonai.com provides a convenient way to reach the worldwide Puerto Rican community.

"Our portal is targeting the 4 million Puerto Ricans on the island and the 4 million Puerto Ricans in the United States who live mostly in the Northeastern corridor," says Carlos J. Nido, president of Virtual Inc., the San Juan-based parent company of www.zonai.com.

Internet penetration in the Puerto Rican market is between 17 and 18 percent of the population, both on the island and in the United States, according to Nido.

"Puerto Rico has more Internet users than many larger Latin countries," he says. "As a result, we have a much more developed market than the rest of Latin America, with a higher demographic profile in terms of income and education levels."

For example, average income in Puerto Rico during 2000 is projected to be about $14,810 GNP per capita, compared with about $3,280 for all of Latin America, according to Nido.

Puerto Ricans who live in the United States offer another attractive target for companies wishing to reach an upscale consumer market, Nido adds.

"They are already online and have no barriers to e-commerce," Nido says. 'Puerto Ricans also have higher Internet penetration rates than other Hispanic groups in the U.S. -- which makes them a prime audience that advertisers want to reach." As the leading portal to Puerto Rico, www.zonai.com meets the needs of a fast-growing user base, while providing an effective Spanish-language marketing tool for Internet advertisers.

"Puerto Rico has already been used as a target market by many Internet advertisers," says Nido. "Now, through one portal, advertisers can reach a large percentage of the online Puerto Rican population."

The Spanish-language portal provides a frequently updated glimpse of news, sports, weather and entertainment-related events in Puerto Rico.

"We are providing the Puerto Rican market with information, products and services tailored to their needs," Nido says. "As a result, our traffic has and is growing very rapidly."

Among the most popular features at www.zonai.com are opinion forums and chat rooms. The site also includes extensive directories of Puerto Rican businesses.

The new portal is the third Internet site developed and operated by Virtual Inc. The Puerto Rican company already offers www.endi.com, a newspaper site, and www.vidadigital.com, a technology-focused Internet magazine. A cobranded site with superfamilia.com was recently named one of the Internet's top 100 web sites by PC Magazine.

"Our overall traffic has grown at an annual rate of about 400 percent over the past three years, and our page views are now at approximately 7.0 million per month," Nido says. "Zonai.com is our portal and umbrella site."

A new health-related vertical portal -- www.consalud.com -- is under development, and four or five other sites are planned. In addition, Virtual Inc. plans to launch an Internet services provider (ISP) in Puerto Rico this spring.

Virtual Inc. is an outgrowth of Grupo Ferre Rangel, a communications company that publishes El Nuevo Dia, the island's leading newspaper, as well as another daily, two weeklies, magazines and other publications.

"We have an exclusive content agreement with all the media properties in the group, which gives us an extensive content base," says Nido, who was responsible for the highly successful launch of Primera Hera, a Puerto Rican newspaper that is part of Grupo Ferre Rangel.

In the future, Virtual Inc. plans to offer similar portal services to other Hispanic groups, such as Dominicans, Cubans and Mexicans. "We believe in the concept of a shared Hispanic online community but with very focused and localized content," says Nido, "and we know how to serve this fast-growing market."