Respecto! Sólo un poquito.

• Author: Stinson, Douglass
• Position: Universo Online; Brasil - TT: Respect! Just a Little Bit. - TA: Universo Online; Brazil - Art

Ask the internet suits on wall street to draw a map of the region and you'll come up with a big hole. That's Brazil they left out.

Universo Online, Brazil's--as well as Latin America's--biggest Internet service provider and portal, hopes to tilt the New York money brokers back toward reality. The 500,000-member-strong service expects to launch its initial public offering by the end of the year.

But StarMedia hypemaster Fernando Espuelas has been so successful in pitching the potential wealth of the Spanish-language, pan-Latin Internet business that U.S. investors barely realize that Brazil exists.

Most online companies are playing their Spanish roots to the hilt, while claiming only nebulous Portuguese plans. "There's a perception on Wall Street that the Latin American market in Spanish is bigger than the Brazilian...