yahoo!xtra versus msn. Overall impact

MSN’s offering is woeful. The search is embarrassingly unusable and takes you off-site, the site itself looks like it was slapped together at midnight last night and the lack of advertising makes you feel like there is no local team nor reason for existence. About the only thing that MSN did well was getting their site up at 00:01 or thereabouts – before Yahoo!xtra. I see no reason to add msn to the (extensive) list of sites that I visit every day. Hopefully we will see PBL flex it’s considerable muscle and improve the site, but there is a long road ahead.

Yahoo!Xtra is much better, but still has plenty of scope to improve. They at least have a working revenue model, and the search, while not as good as Google, is better than the hapless MSN. The layout is pleasant and proven – very similar to the other Yahoo sites, and the site hangs together better than MSN. They do appear not have many business partnerships, aside from Seek, and there are spare ad slots, so there is some scope for revenue increase. I use Yahoo! mail so will no doubt see a bit of the site, but not a huge amount.

Both these sites need a healthy dose of localization, which means boots on the ground, including sales, editorial and tweaking the technology and searches.

Neither of these sites approaches NZHerald or Stuff as a news source, and their other offerings are easily googleable. Video on both is unworkable for me.

Overall a combination of the two big news sites, Trade Me and Google will still be the preferred option for most Kiwis, and indeed by splitting such a huge site (xtraMSN) Telecom may have encouraged more of their users to look elsewhere.

Overall I’d give Yahoo!xtra 7/10 and msn.co.nz 2/10 when comparing them to other domestic sites.

Scoopit!