Ten years ago, the Internet was mostly the domain of scientists, engineers and college professors -- a little-used medium largely for the sharing and dissemination of technical and academic information.

Today’s Internet is all about e-mail, chat, Web sites, online shopping, instant messaging, music downloads and more and is expanding rapidly. More than 52 percent of U.S. households totaling nearly 144 million people are now surfing the Web, well above the 106.3 million people accessing the Internet from home in July 1999, according to measurement service Nielsen Media Research.

With so many people coming online, the Internet today has become a commercial medium that has spawned a dramatic “new economy.” The new economic models of the commercial Internet are shaping the way people work, communicate, entertain and play.

At the forefront of the new Internet economy is the practice of electronic commerce. E-commerce has shifted the focus of the Internet from merely an information-age practice of compiling great amounts of data to using that data to conduct business transactions and commerce. E-commerce, the exchange of goods and services electronically, is conducted largely in two ways -- via business-to-consumer and business-to-business. While business-to-consumer transactions are conducted over the open Internet, business-to-business transactions often are conducted among partners, suppliers, customers and others through private intranets.

Entrepreneurs, for instance, are hanging out “electronic shingles” and virtually overnight are conducting business. This is through the dot-com phenomenon of registering an Internet Web site, laying in content that appeals to specific audiences and marketing and doing business.

Other Internet-inspired economic models see established companies -- the so-called brick-and-mortar traditional firms -- moving significant portions of their operations online and in some cases transforming themselves into dot-com companies. An estimated 50,000 plus U.S. companies today generate some or all of their revenues from the Internet.

E-commerce is expected to experience fast growth over the next several years. Forrester Research Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., forecasts that revenues generated by e-commerce will be as much as $6.9 trillion by 2003. By 2002, e-tailing, a category of e-commerce that involves the purchasing of consumer goods and services online, will be a $41 billion business, compared to a forecasted $12 billion in revenues at the end of 2000, according to Jupiter Communications Inc., a New York market research firm.

The new Internet economy means bringing together under one roof goods and services and information that consumers would otherwise have to obtain from multiple sources and media, such as newspapers, television or traditional brick and mortar retail stores, says Darrol G. Roberts (left), president and chief operating officer of Africana.com, Inc., a Cambridge, Mass., dot-com company that focuses on social, cultural and education needs of the international Black community.

“All those services, once disparate, are now combined in one central source and accessed through the Internet,” Roberts says.

The list of companies leading the Internet revolution is endless -- spanning all industries and disciplines in one way or another. On one side are the purely new economy companies, whether America Online, Yahoo!, Amazon.com, eBay, Priceline.com and Drugstore.com.

While these companies are relatively young, they have established themselves as key brands -- America Online (AOL) as the world’s leading Internet Service Provider and content aggregator; Yahoo! as a leading search engine and Web portal company; Amazon.com as the largest retail store on the Internet; and eBay as the leading site for Internet auctions. During the first quarter of 2000, America Online, Yahoo!, Amazon and Priceline all posted revenues that exceeded $200 million.

America Online, for instance, has revolutionized the way people use the Internet. AOL has amassed more than 23 million subscribers worldwide. More than 110 million electronic mail messages are sent through the AOL service each day. With revenues of $4.7 billion for 1999, including $1 billion gained from advertising and e-commerce, AOL employs more than 12,100.

AOL, like most large new economy companies, has aggressive diversity hiring programs. These companies must be proactive in hiring because the job market for technical and new economy jobs is extraordinarily tight with demand for workers far outstripping supply.

AOL hires college graduates from a variety of majors, including computer science, engineering and business. It also offers undergraduate internships. As arguably the leading new economy company, AOL strengthened its hand with the announced acquisition of Time Warner, Inc. During first quarter 2000 alone, AOL’s revenues stood at $1.83 billion.

Valuing diversity is also smart because many of a company’s future subscribers or users will come from minority groups.

“Your average Internet user two years ago was male, white, making between $60,000 and $90,000 a year and located in a major metropolitan area. Now the online community reflects your average user. A lot of different and new market segments have come on board in the last two years,” says Emily Meehan, an Internet analyst with the Yankee Group, a Boston-based research company.

And many of those new adopters are minorities. As the Internet grows the face of the Internet is changing. African Americans are the fastest growing ethnic group coming online, and Forrester Research notes that ethnic groups (Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians) increased their online participation by 11 percent in 1999.

Surviving and prospering in the new Internet economy means one must be nimble, flexible and even adventuresome to a certain extent, says Willie Atterberry, chairman and chief executive officer of Afronet, Inc., a Los Angeles-based dot-com (www.afronet.com) company targeted to African Americans.

“This medium changes extremely fast,” Atterberry adds. “Overnight you can have a competitor or overnight you can be out of business. A new development can happen in days and the next thing you know you have to react to that as quickly as possible. You have to work with people who work like you do, who understand the fast moving, fast changes that this business is about.”

While African-American-oriented Web sites have not cracked the top echelon of Web companies, they are finding an eager base of ethnic users and are targeting them for electronic commerce.  San Francisco-based NetNoir, Inc. (www.netnoir.com), an African-American-centric dot-com company, estimates that more than 1 million new Black Internet users logged on for the first time in 1999, a growth rate of 36 percent over 1998. NetNoir, which is based in San Francisco, estimates that Black Americans spend more than $500 billion annually.

E-commerce allows consumers to do unique things and find unique products that might be difficult to find in the general public, says Gail Moody, vice president of marketing at NetNoir. “(E-commerce) is a value added service” to Web users,” she says. “It is a safe, secure and convenient practice. It allows them to obtain unique goods, especially in some of the remote markets. We really feel it is a convenience.”

Another indicator of the growing prowess of the new economy is the growth in Internet-related jobs. The Center for Electronic Commerce Research at the University of Texas-Austin, conducting a study for Internet equipment maker Cisco Systems, Inc., found that at the end of 1999, more than 2.5 million Americans held Internet-related jobs, a doubling from 1998. The center also estimates the size of the Internet economy at $524 billion in revenue at the end of 1999. More than 50,000 U.S. companies today generate some or all of their income from the Internet, according to the survey.

The new economy job market is characterized by high salaries, robust benefits, and significant opportunity for advancement. Competition for workers is keen at both the emerging dot-com companies as well the traditional companies with Internet operations. Clearly, it is an employee’s market.

“In this environment, growing a company from a personnel and business perspective is much more difficult,” Roberts of Africana.com says. “This is an environment in which anyone who ever had an entrepreneurial spark is off doing something. So talent which you would have found to possibly come to a large company is just not there anymore.”

The demand for talent in information technology (IT), the broad category that encompasses Internet and e-commerce jobs, will continue to outstrip supply through 2005, according to a study from the META Group, Inc., a research company based in Stamford, Conn. Some 850,000 IT jobs will be unfilled at the end of 2000, more than doubling the number of unfilled positions at the end of 1999, the META Group forecasts.

“A tremendous amount of value has been created from the Internet economy for those seeking jobs, as well as those seeking to fill jobs. The business models and technologies of this dot-com era are making the process more effective all around,” says Scott Edwards (right), director of Internet Business Solutions for New Orleans-based iMinorities, Inc., which publishes THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Magazine and operates career recruitment and self-development Web sites at http://www.black-collegian.com  and http://www.IMDiversity.com.

Fueling demand for workers is a turnover rate as high as 16 percent in the IT industry as workers continue to search out and win new, more lucrative opportunities. Across all vertical industries, such as government, retail, banking and finance, and manufacturing, IT staffing rose about 25 percent, according to the META Group -- ushering home the point that jobs are available everywhere and not just with the dot-coms. 

Enticements companies use to lure workers include stock options, paid graduate school tuition, sign-on bonuses in the $12,000-$15,000 range, health club memberships and overtime. Starting salaries can often begin in the $50,000-$70,000 range depending on the company, region of the country and industry and technical skill level of the job candidate, according to Compensation Link, Inc., which reports on global compensation trends through its Web site, www.compensationlink.com.

Across all IT jobs, median income tends to be higher at companies with more revenues, according to Abbott, Langer & Associates, a consultancy that conducts IT compensation surveys. For instance, companies with sales above $500 million tend to pay IT workers 23 percent more than companies with sales less than $25 million. 

E-commerce and Internet skills are chief in demand at IT companies and IT departments. Forty-one percent of respondents in the META Group survey say they seek workers with those skills, such as developing e-commerce products, designing Web pages and solving customer problems in call centers.

David Dennis, founder and chief executive officer of TopBlacks.com, a Miami-based Web company, says a strong foundation in computer and business skills will serve students well who want to enter IT positions. Even being able to type shouldn’t be taken for granted, he says.

“With those skills right there, they can pretty much branch out into any industry. You have to have the core. The core today is computer skills. They can go into cosmetics. They can go into banking. They can go into apparel. Having the core skills of managing the computer is very important because without it, they are going to be lost,” Dennis says. 

And companies aren’t shy about paying top dollar to get their share of talent. Depending on the region of the country, a database administration manager can pull in as much as $120,100 annually, while an e-commerce director can reach as much as $119,100 in annual income, according to Abbott, Langer & Associates..

Companies in the Northeast and on the West Coast typically pay higher salaries across job categories. For instance, an experienced Web developer can command as much as $97,400 in the Northeast compared to $79,100 in the Southeast, according to Abbott, Langer & Associates. And a data center manager in the Northeast can reach a salary of $110,300 in the Northeast compared with $99,400 in the Midwest.

Because of the information age, finding information on companies is much easier than in the past as just about everything is on the Web. Once you’ve identified a prospective employer, the Web site will list information such as job openings and financial information such as annual reports for publicly held companies. Often one company’s Web site will direct you to a business partner with similar information.

Additionally, companies seeking employees also will list their openings on Internet job(s) boards, such as Monster.com, Careerpath.com. and IMDiversity.com. Students also may go to these sites and post their resumes and receive information on prospective employers. Job databases, resume databases and job agents are all new technologies that work to match job seekers with positions that employers need to fill, says Edwards. 

“This new Internet economy has given birth to an entirely new job search process,” Edwards says. “The efficiencies of database technology combined with the accessibility of the Internet enable job seekers to do much more than they could have traditionally done.”

Marvin V. Greene has written extensively for leading print and online publications including Forbes Special Interest Publications, Telecommunications Reports International, U.S. Black Engineer, Black Enterprise, the Phillips Business Information Media Group, Washtech.com, and ChamberBiz.com.