“Don’t mind the office. We just moved here so everything is a little unorganized” remarks Omar Wasow. Really? Well I wouldn’t have noticed. With a 2.5-million member mark and reigning rank as the fasted growing online community for African Americans, BlackPlanet.com is hot right now.

Wasow, executive director of BlackPlanet (also known as “BP”) leaves his PC to give me a tour of the new offices, talking along the way, introducing some people, even stopping to make a photo copy or two.

So what exactly is all of this ruckus about? What's the big deal about this "BP" anyway? What IS Blackplanet??? BlackPlanet.com is an online community for African diaspora. Launched on the first of September 1999, BlackPlanet has merely just arrived and has already made a threatning presence to all forms of competition. A branch of Community Connect, (the sponsor network that produces other ethnic-related sites like Migente.com and AsianAvenue.com), BlackPlanet has become an eminent entity while still managing to remain ethnically focused.

As the executive director of BlackPlanet.com, Omar Wasow takes on a trio of vital roles. Primarily, Wasow is responsible for the growth and direction of BlackPlanet. As prime strategist for site development, he also has the responsibility of dealing with a large part of the site’s financial concerns through encouraging ad campaign sales for BP. The front man of BlackPlanet, Wasow has been featured from the covers of Rolling Stone Magazines to tutoring Oprah Winfrey on computer technology in talk shows. Valued as a techno savvy source of expertise, Omar is featured three days a week on NBC as an Internet consultant. Obviously enjoying the benefits of technology, Wasow suggests “everybody in life should get the chance to have a job that’s like a sandbox. Computers are my sandbox.”

Growing up in the boom of computer programming, Omar cites BlackPlanet as an idea that he’d been thinking of for years. Wasow noticed a lack of an African American presence on the internet – leading to the very creation of BlackPlanet. However, before the full launch of BP, Omar needed to connect with a company that could aid him in his vision for an online African American community; the partnership with CommunityConnect made www.BlackPlanet.com a reality.

Omar Wasow’s goal is to connect people to each other, helping to make their lives better through friendship, dating, improved employment, enhanced education, or otherwise. Wasow says the ambition “is to make members smarter about the world – to educate, and entertain.” This ambition however, was preliminarily challenged. The challenger: advertising. While initially, advertisers felt uncomfortable with sponsoring an ethnic-related site, concerned that it would deter from mainstream, they rapidly realized that BlackPlanet is mainstream for a large population of the online audience. After the advertising issue, there came an issue of speed. The site needed to be faster. News of “this new BlackPlanet” spread like wildfire, mostly through word-of-mouth, and while overwhelming amounts of users began to sign up, technical glitches leaned a tad on the frequent side. “When it [BlackPlanet] first started, the site crashed nearly 100% of the time” says Wasow.

That was then; this is now. Through rapid adaptation to BlackPlanet’s new “popular” status, BP is no longer a glitch factory. In the year 2001, technical glitches aren’t nearly as recurrent, but member sign-up is.

At the end of an open corridor of the BlackPlanet offices resides a golden gong, bedecked with names the likes of “vibe”, “Packard Bell”, “Visa”, and “Motorola” to name a few. Sound familiar? The aforementioned names are, in a sense, sales that BlackPlanet has made with advertisers. Similar to any network television show, advertisement plays a large role in the financial stability of BlackPlanet.com. The entire framework of BlackPlanet relies on the sticking power of the site--the quality, and the ever-evolving creative “edge “ that prompts the desire to return to “The Planet” time and time again. In the June 26, 2000 E-Business section of the Wall Street Journal, BlackPlanet.com was listed as the stickiest site in its category, with a whopping 34.4 minutes per user. .I’d say that “edge” is working. A consistently large audience attracts advertisers, hence bringing you a an even better BlackPlanet. But what’s the secret? Omar Wasow says “Community”.

While a BP survey shows that more than half (56%) of its members have physically met another member, people have contacted Wasow, thanking him for dramatic improvements in their lives. Some compliment the site for being a networking center for friendships, which, if it had not been for BlackPlanet, may have never developed. One example of this appreciation comes from the touching story of a WWII veteran. Logging on to BlackPlanet gave him a medium to meet friends, where, in any other setting he probably wouldn’t have. Disabled after the war with a variety of physical ailments, this man experienced BlackPlanet as a helpful aid to the minimization of those obstacles.

This isn’t going to say that adults are the only ones taking advantage of BP. Omar attests to even having a group of Harlem youngsters commend him on the site. While one teenager initially had loads of friends who stood on local street corners to kill the time, he know muses at how those same friends are now enthralled in the creation of their own personal pages. “It’s about making it fun” smiles Omar.

In interviweing Wasow, he appears totally confident and focused--the very combination that never fails to unveil itself as the drive behind success. When I bring up competition, he politely brushes it off in a gentle “We’re the best. We only need to concentrate on ourselves” sort of manner…and rightly so. As opposed to testifying to his preoccupation with competition in a highly competitive field, (the internet, where success and failure are equally rushed) he merely points out why certain competitors would have an extremely difficult time in the long-term success of their websites.

A website that I brought up in particular was one that claimed to have a presumable “new edge” over other African American websites. Their “edge” was one of non-censorship. While BlackPlanet.com restricts the uploading of pornographic material, screen names with derogative words/phrases, harassing, vindictive behavior, or even strong levels of vulgarity, the other website prided itself in doing the very opposite. Wasow said that advertising for such material would be extremely difficult—nearly impossible—to obtain from mainstream companies who would reject the responsibility of being associated with that. Time, as well as this reporter, will tell whether that website succeeds in the long-run. If not, well...at least this "other" website tried.

BlackPlanet is definitely unique. The site was started from scratch, so programs like the “Pager” option (a type of instant message feature on the website) would be immensely difficult to replicate. Future plans for the site would be to encompass all aspects of online life that would, as Omar says, “make sense” in the black community. New job, stock, banking, and auction engines (similar to a Monster.com for blacks), are a few ideas for BP's future development.

With all of the publicity that the executive director of BlackPlanet has been getting for his website’s success, I end the interview by asking “Now honestly…what question are you just SO tired of answering?” Referring to people’s response to blacks on the internet, he says, “You know I’m tired of this pessimism, of this overemphasis on the [race-related] ‘Digital Divide’. What digital divide? If anything, I see an educational divide. That’s what we need to focus on. I don’t see this ‘Digital Divide’. On my website, people are creating web pages.”