siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php/358231
By Ken Cimino May 9, 2000 Okay, I'm your typical GenXer. Over the last ten years I have participated in every fad. Except for sleep and exercise, I have done almost everything online. About half of my friends are either pierced or tattooed, or both. I own Nirvana and Pearl Jam CDs. I have shopped at the Gap and have worn Doc Martins. I hang out at coffebars and eat powerbars. I've been to raves and have seen the musical Rent four times. I work all day on a PC and then go back on at night to read e-mail. I have worked at a start-up and now work at a dot com. I haven't worn a tie since 1995. And now you can add Yahoo FinanceVision to my list of favorites. You see, like most of my friends, I'm now addicted to the stock market. We talk options during lunch. We look at valuations and discuss P/E ratios. Until recently, our favorite three-letter word was IPO. Yahoo has tapped into something with its latest offering. FinanceVision is a live financial network which Webcasts business news and information. Its shows are interactive, where users submit live questions to the show's on air guests. FinanceVision offers live market updates from the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. The anchors are young, hip and knowledgeable. Yahoo, clearly knows it audience. It's experimenting in a new medium with a new model. It's not CNBC and it doesn't want to be. Yahoo is targeting my generation, and I'm addicted to its latest product. (Full disclosure: before joining internet.com this year, I briefly worked at Yahoo on the launch of FinanceVision, so I've had early exposure to the product and know some of the people there). I've used other financial services on the Web, but I find Yahoo's FinanceVision is the easiest and most intelligent when it comes to streaming media. I still devour CBS MarketWatch and our own internetstock channel for content. But as a child of the "raised by television" generation give me video and more video. I'M A BELIEVER Forget buying body parts on Ebay. Never mind, talking to E-Trade about my latest stock transaction. No more, buying, toilet paper from WebVan. Give me FinanceVision 24/7. After last month's market downturn I started watching Lorna Ho with the market close report and I was hooked. I can work, watch my stocks and ask CEO and analysts questions through the data window. I follow the market and more importantly my stocks throughout the day. "FinanceVision allows users to personalize their experience more," says Yahoo FinanceVision's executive producer Eric Scholl. "We offer unique features and live market coverage on an ongoing program and the audience gets to control the action," says Scholl. "You get a personal experience in a way you don't with television." But not everyone is a fan. FinanceVision has had its share of media establishment critics complaining that the anchors are young and unsophisticated about finance. But I disagree. Who says a person has to wear a suit to make him or her know more about business? Who made these rules and why can't we change them? I like the format. I like the anchors talking my talk. Is it my only source of financial news information? No. Is it good at what it does? Yes. "They're trying to increase audience loyalty, through stickiness, hold your eyeballs as long as possible", says Jupiter Communications senior analyst David Card. "Yahoo is smart to start with financial news and offer coverage during the day, because people will watch while at work where the connection is strong", says Card. Yahoo is the most popular Internet portal, but it carries lots of humdrum looking content. Last year, Yahoo purchased Broadcast.com to expand its mostly text services to include audio and video. The move was a huge billion-dollar gamble for Yahoo that is still playing out. "Broadcast.com was an infrastructure play, it doesn't produce it own content, its exclusive for Yahoo," says Card. Yahoo's FinanceVision is the next evolution ofthe Yahoo Broadcast partnership. "We were already offering all this aggregate content including video, so this seemed like the logical next step," says Scholl. So, my fellow generation Xers watch Yahoo FinanceVision at your own risk (of getting hooked). This is just the tip of the iceberg. As more people get DSL and cable, expect more streaming content from a number of other players like AOL/Time Warner. And don't expect Yahoo to sit still. A Yahoo SportsVision, TechnologyVision, and EntertainmentVision can't be far away. |
Legal Notices, Licensing, Reprints, Permissions, Privacy Policy.
Advertise | Newsletters | Shopping | E-mail Offers | Freelance Jobs 