Date: Monday, March 31, 2008

Yahoo Shines after Launching New Site

Yahoo is celebrating today after launching their first ever demographic specific website. The search engine giant owns sites that are specific to a subject such as finance or sport, but the launch of Shine signifies their most targeted site to date.

Shine is designed to appeal to women aged 25 – 54, which is a market that the Yahoo portfolio had previously underrepresented. Yahoo’s move into this demographic is sure to be a lucrative one particularly with regard to advertising revenue. The newly launched site is expected to lure a whole host of new advertisers to Yahoo, particularly those promoting retail, pharmaceutical and consumer-packaged goods. This is important to Yahoo, as the business has recently seen a significant slump in advertising revenue.

Shine will have a diverse range of editorial content covering sex and love, beauty, alternative medicine, parenting, healthy living, career and money, entertainment, and fashion. Like the newly launched Yahoo Buzz service, Shine encourages participation from its users, so their team of editors are responsible for picking the best blog posts and stories from the web, as well as writing new content daily.

Yahoo’s launch of Shine shows a dedication to their new strategy, which will see them create a network of themed sites to appeal to mass audiences. The search engine giant initially started to implement this strategy in May 2006, which is when they launched Yahoo Tech. They built on this later that year by launching Yahoo Food, and according to figures from market research company Hitwise, these ventures have been very successful so far.

Troubled Yahoo bosses are hoping that Shine will add a little sparkle to their stricken business, which has recently struggled to fend off an aggressive takeover bid from Microsoft.

Source:

Associated Press

Reuters