Internet powerhouse Yahoo Inc will begin dispensing advice about personal finances in its latest bid to boost its own finances.
The new money management package, which was scheduled to make its debut on Thursday night, is being offered as an extension of Yahoo's decade-old finance section -- one of the Web's top-ranked destinations for business and investment information.
Yahoo is battling to maintain its status as the most visited Web site in the US, although many analysts give the company little hope of holding on to those bragging rights now that Internet search leader Google Inc owns the heavily trafficked video sharing site YouTube.
Finance is one of the areas where Yahoo holds a huge advantage over Google, which branched into the field just 10 months ago. With 9.6 million US visitors last month, Yahoo's finance section ranked second behind Microsoft Corp's MSN Money, according to comScore Media Metrix. Google's finance section did not draw enough traffic to show up on Media Metrix's listings.
Yahoo decided to widen its focus to include more simple money matters because many people are more interested in balancing their checkbooks than juggling their stock portfolios, said Scott Moore, who runs the company's news and information division.
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 Google. That gap is expected to be accentuated again during the next two weeks as Yahoo and Google report their fourth-quarter earnings.
The personal finance section will include tips and tools for household budgeting, tax planning, careers, real estate and debt management. Most of the content will be provided by other sources, including the Wall Street Journal, the Motley Fool, Consumer Reports and CNNMoney.com.
Yahoo's decelerating growth has disillusioned investors, contributing to a 28 percent decline in the company's stock price since 2005.
A slowdown in financial services advertising late last year exacerbated Yahoo's misery, but Moore said the company already was already developing a personal finance section before that problem came up.
The personal finance initiative represents the third new information channel launched in the past eight months, following sections revolving around technology and food.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS