Yahoo’s Personal Finance Touch

Yahoo today added a personal touch to Yahoo Finance.

Yahoo Personal Finance provides users with an collection of financial centers covering nine areas of personal finance ranging from banking and budgeting to retirement.

Content from the site will come from various different sources. CNNMoney, Consumer Reports,
Kiplinger, The Motley Fool, Smart Money and the Wall Street Journal are among the 25 licensed content providers. The site will also include original content from 13 financial columnists.

Another source of content will come from Yahoo users. Editors will select from Yahoo Answers’ pool of questions and answers to provide the user-generated content. In addition, the site will feature 48 how-to guides and 66 financial calculators.

At a Wednesday demonstration for the press in midtown Manhattan,
Yahoo Finance general manager Peggy White told reporters that part of
the incentive for Yahoo to expand its finance section was that
advertisers want to reach users who are in the midst of making life-changing money decisions.

White said that, along with 49 research
sessions with users, advertisers held 11 whiteboard sessions with
Yahoo to help shape the new site’s design. White said the site had
sold out its advertising slots for the launch.

The launch continues the company’s overhaul of its media groups,
which started last spring with a new tech site. A Yahoo food site followed in the fall.

Given how often Yahoo and Google are compared, Yahoo’s new finance
section will inevitably be compared with Google Finance. But the
products are probably more different than alike.

Google’s is
more of an online financial application. It takes in data and spits
it back out. All of its links to finance articles lead off Google’s
site. Google calls it a switchboard.

Such applications, White told internetnews.com, aren’t Yahoo
Finance’s “sweet spot.” Yahoo is much more oriented around
its own content. More of which is well on its way, she said.

“We’re not stopping.”