Sunnyvale, California – Struggling internet pioneer Yahoo, an organization that counts web hosting among the many services it provides to small businesses via its Yahoo Small Business brand, has officially unveiled a new site called Yahoo Small Business Advisor, which it has been operating in beta for several months along with tools and information for entrepreneurs.
The company claims that the newly released media property is touted as being the “premier online destination dedicated to personalized entrepreneurial news, advice and tools for entrepreneurs and aspiring small business owners,” which will compete with the likes of AMEX Open Forum and Startup Nation.
However, the site was introduced in beta late last year, but it is apparently ready for prime time now.
“We are excited to present our users with a destination that provides them with the support they need in these complicated economic and political times,” said Tom Byun, vice president and GM, Yahoo Small Business. “We are passionate about empowering the small-business community with the necessary counsel — whatever that means to the individual — to help them achieve their entrepreneurial dreams.”
Tom Byun Yahoo! VP & GM Small Business Credits: Yahoo!
On the other hand, Small Business Advisor functions as an aggregator of news stories from various sources, which includes original articles and videos from Yahoo!’s own Small Business experts, while top-tier partners including Entrepreneur, Inc. and Reuters contribute best-in-class small-business news.
There are several aspects to Yahoo! Small Business Advisor that are pretty interesting. First of all, it employs the search engine giant’s Content Optimization Relevance Engine to highlight articles of interest to users, based on past history. A social bar displays what others are reading within a user’s network and the iPad application is excellent.
In fact, apart from these, Yahoo! Small Business Advisor also features an exclusive interview with chef Ming Tsai, Emmy award-winning host of the public television cooking show “Simply Ming” and owner of Blue Ginger restaurant, offering his personal tips for entrepreneurs and aspiring small-business owners with additional posts from various celebrity entrepreneurs to follow.
Most hosts are pretty familiar of how difficult it can be to attract SMBs to a hosting service. Besides, this commences an extensive series with Yahoo! Small Business Advisor highlighting celebrity small-business owners. Future small-business tips will be provided by other celebrity entrepreneurs, including Dylan Lauren, CEO and Founder of Dylan’s Candy Bar.
Meanwhile, Yahoo! Small Business Advisor displays some of Yahoo!’s patented technologies and new features, including:
- Yahoo!’s Content Optimization Relevance Engine (C.O.R.E.)–also used by Yahoo! editorial programmers as a guide in Yahoo! homepage programming, which enables Advisor to learn what is interesting to users and surface those types of articles for easy navigation and content discovery
- Yahoo! Social Bar highlights the business news a user’s personal social network is reading and talking about
- Yahoo!’s Livestand iPad app provides “anytime, anywhere” access to Advisor content, which includes small-business articles, videos, blogs, and Twitter feeds
- Yahoo! Answers allows users to tap the wisdom of the community to answer pressing small-business questions
Overall, the site officially unleashed Monday with the results of a survey of small businesses, addressing political issues concerning small businesses during this election year, as well as a blog post from Karen Mills, head of the US Small Business Association.
Furthermore, for a small business owner who is dependent on the Advisor portal for information on running his or her business, it is a short hop to expanding that “trusted advisor” role to include the hosting relationship. Besides, it remains to be seen whether Yahoo’s custom small business content can compete with the likes of niche bloggers and other small business networks.