Southern Maryland's Virtual Town Square

Story by George Newman
Photography by Ed Mann

When Dee Jay Gude started calling on potential advertisers for Southern Maryland Online, she often heard, "What's the Internet?" That was 1996 - the Middle Ages in cyberspace history. It was also the year the Pentagon's base relocation program was creating thousands of new jobs, military and civilian, in Southern Maryland. Gude, who had been selling advertising for cable television in St. Mary's County, understood that there could be a link between the Internet and people who would want information about their new neighborhoods. But she didn't know how to make the technology work. David Noss, a civilian computer engineer working for the Navy, also saw a role for the Internet. But he didn't know how to sell it. When Gude and Noss met, the result was somd.com, which today serves as Southern Maryland's virtual town square, attracting nearly 300,000 people each month.

Gude tells the story: "A lot of my [television] clients, the advertisers, were going to expos for people coming down for base relocation. I was thinking - I didn't know anything about the Internet -'I wonder if you can do anything like that on the Internet.' I was talking to a mutual friend of mine and David's, and she said, 'You ought to call David Noss, he knows how to do all that stuff.' He went and booted up his computer, and there was a prototype of Southern Maryland Online. He said, 'I can't figure out how you make money on this.'" But fortunately, Gude did.

The concept caught on immediately with many of the tech-savvy workers being moved to Patuxent Naval Air Station. They began searching the new web site for information on housing, schools, shopping, and daily life in Southern Maryland. Unlike newspapers or advertising circulars, a web site allowed them to interact with people already there, and get candid opinions on what was desirable and what wasn't. Still, Gude's confidence about making money wasn't immediately rewarded. "We had a core of loyal fanatics right away," Noss said, "but the first few years were pretty lean." By 2000, however, Gude and Noss felt they had turned the corner. They were attracting banner ads, plus dozens of sponsors, from Advanced Building Solutions to Zekiah Technologies, and establishing links to scores of community resources, including this magazine.

Today the site features everything from a lively community forum that Gude, the self-described "Board Mommy," moderates to keep the discussion civil, to housing and employment listings, to news summaries and obituaries, among much else. The newest addition is an Internet radio station, described by Gude and Noss as the first in the area. Although the station has yet to attract a mass audience, Gude expresses confidence that "Internet radio is going to be huge in the future. We're making an investment in it for when this is the norm." The station, accessible from a link on somd.com or separately at somd.fm, regularly features local groups as well as a variety of recorded music, plus CBS news.

For all its growth, somd.com boasts none of the trappings of corporate success. As they did at the beginning, Gude and Noss run the enterprise from their homes. That includes most of the on-air work for the radio station, which means Dee Jay is sometimes a DJ. (But that's not how she got her name.)

"We've put a lot of sweat equity in this," says Noss, who cites the lack of overhead as a key to somd.com's success. Gude adds, "You have to serve your community and bring them something that they can't get somewhere else and they want. You do that, and they'll reward you with their loyalty, and from that you'll get rewarded with advertiser dollars."

When Gude calls on prospective advertisers these days, she's no longer selling an unknown entity. And, no, she doesn't have to explain the Internet.

NEED HELP? If you're a new Internet user, you may find somd.com's home page, with its hundreds of links, overwhelming. Try this: Just look at the bottom left for the link, "Need help using somd.com?" It leads to a customer service center with answers to frequently asked questions and helpful information of all kinds.

Valuable information for Internet rookies and veterans alike, is provided in the "Important bulletin about Internet scams" link on the customer service page. Unfortunately, no internet site is immune from dishonest folks, but common sense guidelines such as safeguarding your personal information can help keep you safe.

A taste of somd.com

Need someone to shear your llamas or haul away your dead horse?

Those were two recent pleas among the thousands of posts on somd.com's community forum, along with more conventional requests for advice on a place to take the kids for dinner, a home for a stray cat, a good sushi bar, the best commuter route to Andrews Air Force Base or the best infant car seat.

Free from the space constraints of print publications, somd.com runs more than a million web pages annually, offering a glimpse into both the business and personal lives of Southern Marylanders. In addition to dozens of forum discussion topics, one day's content included classified ads boasting 59 real estate listings, from a $700,000 waterfront home to a $166,000 foreclosure sale; and 115 job openings, including a senior engineer and a hip-hop dance instructor. Announcements told of 1,625 births, 1,798 weddings and 2,791 deaths. (The last three categories go back several years, and the weddings include future plans.)

How about the sheep and the horse? One forum participant, owner of several llamas, knew a professional shearer. Several others offered condolences and help to the horse owner - two examples among many of a Southern Maryland community in cyberspace.