By Casey Muller
Starmedia.com is a Spanish language portal site. Portals sites are
somewhat out of style right now, but themed portals will always have
an audience.
Starmedia has a practical attitude towards Spanish and English. It
recognizes that Spanish speaking Internet users also understand English,
but would prefer to read Spanish. As such, some of the links on the
site are in English, and it's clear that some of the web developers
were more comfortable with English.
The site has a fairly large media section, with music videos and
previews. In addition to the mainstream Hollywood offerings, they
have a good selection of Spanish products.
When you first enter the site it asks you to give your location, but
it is not immediately clear how that information is used, other than
perhaps their own internal logs. A better choice would be an obviously
localized site, even if all it did was add an extra banner.
The website also contains a directory of web resources, with Spanish
reviews. They make an effort to have webpages in Spanish featured
in each category, but also include the better English ones for thoroughness.
Starmedia also has a personals area and bulletin board system. They
seem moderately active. This is an important aspect of their concept
of an all-in-one Spanish site, and they seem to have deployed it well.
Starmedia would clearly like to be the Spanish language Yahoo, and
seems to have the basic elements. It presents a good view of the Internet
from a Spanish perspective, and they manage to create a situation
where someone with a weak grasp of English could more easily navigate
the Internet.