With the new Yahoo homepage that was previewed last July and is now rolling out more broadly as part of Yahoo’s new “It’s Y!ou” branding exercise, the main Yahoo homepage is taking on more of the personalization features on MyYahoo. There are all sorts of handy widgets in the left-hand column ranging from Facebook status updates to Gmail to any news feed (just type in a URL like Techcrunch.com and it will add the feed). When you hover over any of the widgets, a box opens up covering most of the homepage with information from that widget.
Today, Yahoo is making it possible to add applications made on the Yahoo Application Platform (YAP) to that sidebar as well. One of the first apps it is launching with is from personal finance tracker Mint, with its Budget by Mint widget. Other YAP apps launching today on the homepage include A-Z Wine Pairings from MyRecipes & Snooth, Books weRead by WeRead, Brain Trainer by Lumosity, a social version of the Flood-it game by LabPixies, kaChing’s virtual stock portfolio app, Movies by Flixster, and WordPRess QuickPress. YAP is part of Yahoo’s Open Strategy that it kicked off last year.
The Budget by Mint widget and other YAP apps are already available on MyYahoo, but getting on the main Yahoo homepage potentially puts it on front of 118 million American users a month, versus 25 million for My Yahoo (comScore). The app ties into your Mint account, and shows pie charts and bar graphs of your budget, spending trends, and alerts. You can see the percentage of your budget that is going to taxes, shopping, dining, bills, and other expenses, and even share that with your friends if you are into that sort of personal financial transparency.
Mint launched two years ago at TechCrunch40, and was bought by Intuit for $170 million earlier this month.
Here is what the Budget by Mint widget looks like when it opens up in Yahoo:
TC really are going to milk Mint as much as possible, right? It’s like your little show-off toy: “Hey, they were at TC50 and got acquired for a ton of money! We rock!”
I mean, I don’t blame you or anything… just sayin’
That’s the first thing that popped into my head.
Mint isn’t available outside the US, boo!
Note- If you’re one of the many users experiencing connectivity issues between Mint and your bank (see Mint forums), this widget contains far less data and far more failure.
@Erick – Yahoo! logo is Purple colored now. In corporation description you guys are still showing red.
thnx, fixed
**HUGE** thumbs down to the new Yahoo home page. It’s awkward, a step backwards (looks like its previous iteration a few years ago) and takes more steps now to do anything than it did before. Boo! to the re-design. I hope they let me keep the old one. It’s enough to make me finally end my decade long love affair with yahoo.
it took you a decade to figure out y sux?
i’ve been loyal, what can I say
It’s a step in the right direction for Yahoo which desperately needs some good press. Not a google killer obviously, but if they can leverage and build momentum with good widgets that people want with today’s internets, they may yet become relevant again.
Landing pages are still too busy and distracted for most people to digest. They desperately need some direction in UE improvements. Y! Lite (a la facebookLite) anyone?
wow its amazing how many of these systems people will allow their financial data to flow through. how do you know yahoo isn’t logging this stuff?
YAP. wow. yawn. it only took 2.5 years to do this (?)
yahoo’s 100 M marketing budget at work .. good try TC
Note- If you’re one of the many users experiencing connectivity issues between Mint and your bank (see Mint forums), this widget contains far less data and far more failure.
This is cool and it adds more beauty to Yahoo’s homepage.
I love mint! I used to use Quicken, but mint.com won me over awhile ago. I’ve enjoyed the Financial Fitness enhancement and I use the iPhone app–which could be better. I won’t use the My Yahoo app. I barely use Yahoo as it is and the closest I come to a landing page is my feedly digest. Regardless, I’m not the target audience. They want to reach the early majority and Yahoo will help with that segment.
I love mint! I used to use Quicken, but mint.com won me over awhile ago. I’ve enjoyed the Financial Fitness enhancement and I use the iPhone app–which could be better. I won’t use the My Yahoo app. I barely use Yahoo as it is and the closest I come to a landing page is my feedly digest. Regardless, I’m not the target audience. They want to reach the early majority and Yahoo will help with that segment.
Sorry… forgot to say great post – can’t wait to read your next one!
why to use mint!i worlk width my bank ..online…directly! and it’s super ok!