April 28, 2006 | In Business, Technology |
AOL is trying to increase its presence in the world of online financial reporting, with a series of blogs about the stock performance of high profile companies.
The seven companies initially covered include Time Warner, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Google, Apple, eBay, and GE. This lineup will almost certainly expand if the new website, BloggingStocks.com, proves to be popular.
The site is managed by a team of professional bloggers and analysts, who provide daily reports and commentary on each of the companies. And like any blog, readers may post their thoughts and responses.
BloggingStocks.com will be integrated with AOL’s Money & Finance portal, as well as with the WeblogsInc blog network, which the internet giant purchased for $25 million last year. This integration strategy is obviously intended to combine the casual and entertaining nature of blogs with the seriousness of good financial journalism.
Ultimately the new site’s degree of success or failure will depend on the writers. With a good selection of current and former journalists and analysts, AOL seems to have picked a winning team. Hopefully this team will do a good job at integrating the two types of journalism, so as to achieve the same popular status as Engadget, Joystiq, and apply it to the world of finance.
