NEW INTERNET SITE LINKS NORTH TEXAS LATINOS
The Internet contains sites that cater to most any taste, lifestyle or interest. About the only thing missing was a Web site made particularly for Dallas-Fort Worth Latinos.

That niche market now has been filled. The new site, www.dallasvida.com, is intended to be a single location to help Latinos connect to business and cultural information pertinent to the Hispanic community. Yareli Esteban, the site's marketing director, said the concept is overdue.

"We're offering very specialized content to a very specialized group of people," she said. "Those are Latinos in D-FW who are bilingual, educated, who want a resource because our culture is such a big impact."

The Web site offers local information on cultural associations, entertainment, news, businesses, personal profiles and the arts. The portal also includes a job bank. The developers coined the catchphrase "Your City, Your Life, Your Style," to describe the site's sole focus on area Latinos.

Corey Akins launched dallasvida.com last month following the success he achieved with a site, www.dallasblack.com, geared specifically to the North Texas black community.

"Dallasblack.com gets about 3,500 visitors a day," Akins said. "So, we said, 'Let's try dallasvida.com.' There was no other site or product like that in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, so we decided to develop it and, hopefully, it will have the same success."

The company has its headquarters in the Deep Ellum section of downtown Dallas. Akins, Esteban and the staff of dallasvida.com believe they have a viable market to tap. There are about 500,000 local Latinos who are Internet users.

"No one else has a hold on the Latino online market in Dallas," Danny Chibli, sales manager, said.