Web Sites With More Bite Aimed at Young Set

For some teenagers--such as ravers with black hair, tongue piercings and a taste for underground music--popular teen Web sites such as Cosmogirl.com and Teenpeople.com won’t cut it. The edgier set is clicking on progressive alternatives, including Thirsty.com, ChickClick.com and iTurf.com.

Thirsty.com, which officially launched July 15, is perhaps the best executed of the genre. The site, located at https://www.thirsty.com, features 13 “channels” (subject areas): Xsports, Indie/Punk, Sci-Fi/Comics, Coffeehouse, Gothic, Technology, Rave, Grrrlz, Rock, Hip Hop, Pop, Wrestling and Hollywood. The destination is intelligently designed, with an attractive file folder look, and the content is plentiful--with more than 300 celebrity bio sites--if not always deep (witness a caption-writing contest for a photo of Britney Spear’s peek-a-boo breast).

Thirsty has deployed state-of-the-art technology geared to engender a sense of community. Once visitors register, they can receive headlines from their favorite sections via pager, cell phone, instant messaging program and e-mail. They can choose to receive their news by keyword, lifestyle and location (if tickets were to go on sale in their area, for example), and they can send messages to other Thirsty users.

An exposed publishing tool, with viewable entry fields, allows users to submit their own stories and act as editors by writing headlines, choosing keywords, attaching photos, adding links and more. Users can earn points, and eventually win prizes, by engaging in the interactive options.

“This is the first time 13- to 22-year-olds have had the opportunity to have the information they’re most passionate about delivered to them the same way stocks and sports are delivered to adults,” said Thirsty chief executive Jeff Pollack. “The Net makes this uniquely possible.”

Pollack co-founded Thirsty in 1999 with his partner from Handprint Entertainment, Benny Medina. At Handprint, the duo created the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” TV series and managed such artists as Will Smith, Jennifer Lopez and Sean “Puffy” Combs. Pollack hopes the Los Angeles-based Thirsty will become the “definitive first source of content for the demographic” through its Hollywood connections and ear-to-the-ground editing staff dedicated to refreshing content 20 to 40 times a day.

So far, the site attracts more than 20,000 unique visitors daily. “We’ll know before the studio if and when Keri Russell cuts her hair again,” Pollack said. “And that’s just as important to our users as it would be to us whether the Nasdaq goes up or down 100 points.”

San Francisco-based ChickClick.com is a hub for 57 sister sites and provides content from such female dot-coms as Adolescent Adulthood to You Grow Girl. A division of the Snowball network of generation-i sites, ChickClick has been online since February 1998 and has more than 1.3 million registered users.

ChickClick, located at https://www.chickclick.com, features eight content channels (Body & Soul, Entertainment, Home & Craft, Society & Politics, Sports & Fitness, Work & Money, Miss Click and EstroClick) as well as a suite of free services, including e-mail and voicemail.

Gals can listen to and personalize ChickClick Radio, which debuted July 8 on radio stations in 27 U.S. markets. The online and offline program features celebrity interviews and themes from money to traveling.

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Users can also explore controversial topics such as birth control (in Body & Soul) and racism (in Miss Click). On Aug. 28, a special election section will launch in Society & Politics to encourage young women to vote and become aware of key campaign topics.

But, of course, there will still be room to talk about tongue piercing. In “Pierced and Proud,” an article in the Miss Click section, Karen, 18, explains, “This piercing isn’t just a ‘cool’ thing to do for me. It was a way to liberate myself from everyone’s expectations and assumptions--having a metal ball attached to my tongue was the physical manifestation of that uniqueness.”

Over at New York-based iTurf, users can peruse eight channels including Sports, Sounds, Speak, Sex, Survival, Style and Screen. Located at https://www.iturf.com, the site was launched in May as part of the iTurf network of sites targeted at the 12-to-24 age group. On Aug. 2, the site debuted online-only iTurf radio, available live and by request (from 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. Monday through Friday) and in four prerecorded mixes.

While the site emphasizes play, it also encourages users to answer tough questions like “Should we blame ‘violent’ games for violent people?” and “Should parents have any say in their daughter’s pregnancies?”

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Michele Botwin can be reached at michele.botwin@latimes.com.