For the company, personal home pages are a convenient, cost-effective way to manage vast amounts of information about its employees; for the employee, they are an opportunity to become more visible -- and thus more valuable. Several thousand pages are already in place, Woo says, and the benefits are evident. "It's made work more visible, so there's more collaboration. It's helped members of a very lkarge organization make themselves known to one another."

Once US West creates the Web pages, each employee claims his or her own and takes responsibility for updating it. What they post may determine their career path. "People's skills, the fact that they're pursuing a degree on the side in computer auditing, or have a particular interest - that kind of information is useful when managers are looking for someone with the background to solve a problem or participate in a project," says Woo. Eventually, the pages will act as a directory of expertise or "yellow pages," opening up new channels for people to find each other and undermining the strict hierarchy that persists at many companies. "People who have home pages have work," Woo says. "and people who don't, don't have to work."

Sidebar: RULS for URLS

What does it take to make your URL a destination and not a detour?

Web guru Howard Rheingold, whose own home page, Brainstorms
(http://www.well.com/user/hlr), has received more than 70,000 visitors since December 1995, knows. Staged as a virtual jam session for scoping out the future, the site pops with fresh content, including the latest on all things "rheingoldian," reports on the digital zeitgeist, and discussions among the community of "humanist futurists." "It's swallowed my life," says Rheingold happily. Here are his dos and don'ts for keeping house on the Web:

Don't:

1. Put up pictures of your family and pets. It's the ultimate cliché of the boring Web page.

2. Assume that users know as much about your site as you do. Be sure to provide navigational cues -- a table of contents, a site map, or a search feature.

3. Overload your home page with too much information. No more than 40K on the top page. You don't want people downloading all that extraneous stuff to find out what you're all about.

4. Use blink. Blink says, "This is an amateur!" Animated gifs are the new blink. They're flashy and cool -- the first time -- but they're a dead end.

5. Leave your page untouched for months on end. Stale material labels your site a Ghost Town. Update frequently -- at least once a month.

Do:

1. Have interesting content. Of course, what's interesting depends on what you're interested in. Whether it's sheepdogs or parallel processing or technology IPOs, there's an opportunity for you to narrowcast your interests and get in touch with people who share them.

2. Remember that usability is more important than visual impact -- people have limited bandwidth and limited time. Stay away from those huge online graphics.

3. Include a "mail to." People want to know not just who you are, but how to get in touch. Feedback is everything.

4. Provide fresh links. If you make the effort, the regulars will come back -- and they'll bring friends.

5. Try this at home.