Seeking to increase its already sizeable lead as the Internet’s leading financial portal, Yahoo has launched a new addition to its Finance site, which is geared at helping users make more informed decisions concerning their personal finances.
For the last ten years, Yahoo Finance has been the quintessential destination for those looking to optimize their stock portfolios and increase the overall bottom line of their investments.
Now, Yahoo hopes that it will also become the place where people go to balance their checkbooks.
AP writer Michael Liedtke lends some insight as to the strategic significance behind the launch of Yahoo Personal Finance:
By reaching out to a broader audience, Yahoo hopes to lure more advertisers and accelerate recently lackluster revenue growth that has lagged far behind the pace of Internet search leader Google Inc. That gap is expected to be accentuated again during the next two weeks as Yahoo and Google report their fourth-quarter earnings
Yahoo’s new personal finance site is comprised of the usual things you would expect to find. How-to articles, income/expense calculators, current interest rates, and expert opinions make up a large percentage of the content on the page.
One section caught my eye above the others, however. Yahoo has implemented its Answers feature into the portal, allowing people to ask questions pertaining to specific financial situations and tap into the user base to receive comprehensive answers and advice as a result.
User-generated content is playing an increasingly vital role in the broader landscape of retrieving and consuming information. People don’t just want to hear from the so-called “experts”; they want to engage their peer groups as well.
By tapping into their already successful Answers platform, Yahoo gives “street cred” (for lack of a better term) to its personal finance site.
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Joe is a staff writer for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest ebusiness news.
