by Yi-Chuan Jane Hsieh & Punky Kwatsha
University of Michigan School of Information

Sites compared:

St. Paul Area Association of Realtors (Commercial)
USA Citylink (Commercial)
Twin Cities Sidewalk.com (Commercial)
City of St. Paul (Government)
Twin Cities Free-Net (Non-profit)

We explored five sites in the Twin Cities community; three of them are commercial, one is non-profit, and one is the government site.

Among the commercial ones, St. Paul Area Association of Realtors (SPAAR) offers the consumer important information about the Twin Cities, such as house-hunting, schools, and city information. This site helps people who plan to move into the Twin Cities. It links to various other commercial resources, government resources as well as media (local newspapers, TV channels) information. Citylink and SPAAR both link to St. Paul's government site. St. Paul's government site is much more like a database, which allows users to search for local government, municipal, and city information. Twin Cities Sidewalk offers powerful entertainment and recreation resources. Included are hundreds of non-profit-making agencies and volunteer opportunities.

The Freenet offers the most satisatory service for the Twin Cities community. It links to St. Paul government, and the USA Citylink site, and it covers information about cities and neighborhoods, which is insufficient on other sites. It focuses on community communication by providing various kinds of conferences and mailing lists. Its access to information is plentiful from public libraries, television, radio, newspapers, and other media.