French and Arabic Algerian dailies are some of the most dynamic actors on the Internet. By comparison, the country's businesses and institutions are largely absent from the Web. Just under twenty newspaper web sites exist (out of a total of fifty dailies at the end of 2003), mostly in French. The first appeared in 1997. All offer an electronic version of the editorial content familiar to readers of the printed version, with a limited range of additional offers. Despite the absence of an on-line advertising market, a minority has adopted some of the new trends on web sites such as continuous news updated with special files and services, and interactivity. Existing on the web is a guarantee of modernity and the only way of reaching a cultured Algerian diaspora whose members, now in Europe, North America and Gulf countries, fled the violence of the 'red decade'? (1992-2002).