Black Planet
By Karen Feigenbaum
[**** out of *****]
With broadcast, one single piece of content was finally able to go
out to numerous people, cutting across cultural, racial, and geographic
differences. Uniting people, in a strange sense of the word, by having
them all receive and (hopefully) enjoy the same product despite
their differences. Yet, one of the greatest (and perhaps unforeseen)
benefits of the Internet has been the ability to narrowcast. The ability
to celebrate differences.
The Internet has finally allowed people to individually compartmentalize
themselves into whatever group(s) with which they identify. And this
does not mean that it must be the standard gender, racial, cultural,
religious, etc. differences, either - you can classify yourself however
you see yourself, and find a group of people somewhere on the
Internet which also identifies itself as that same self-selected group.
But naturally, the standard groupings always emerge…they are,
after all, not considered standards without reason. And as far as
portals go, Black Planet is fairly standard. It allows for black web-surfers
to come together in an on-line community, to chat, to post to discussion
groups, etc.
I believe the site deserves four stars out of five not because it
does anything amazing or brilliantly new or innovative in the slightest
way. I don't believe that it's necessarily the best set-up web-site
I've ever seen. But I do believe that it provides a needed and wanted
service, and that it performs this service competently. That is really
all that can be asked