Do Young People Want Their "Own" Financial News?

Filed in archive General on May 14, 2008

Silicon Alley Insider has a short piece today on the launch of FiLife in June. FiLife is/will be a personal finance content site for young people; it's a joint venture between Dow Jones and IAC. But it's had trouble getting off the ground; I actually was interviewed by a couple of writers there quite a while back as they gathered content for a launch that never happened. (To be fair, there is a well-written blog in place, but it's not the big portal that seemed to be on the horizon.) Since then the top editor left and it sounds like a few writers have as well. It may be turning into more of a social network kind of site instead of a big financial information portal.

Anyway, reading about it today I can't help but wonder if financial information geared to young people is a winning game. Yes, young people face different financial issues than older people, but how many of them have an active enough interest in reading about personal finance regularly? Are there enough to support a Web site like FiLife? Are the needs/interests of those in their 20s and early 30s that much different that their personal finance questions/concerns aren't being covered by Money Magazine or Dow Jones' own SmartMoney?

I don't know. I do know that some Pf blogs like Get Rich Slowly have managed to get a big enough audience to support their authors, and I'm guessing that audience skews younger. But it's one thing to have a blog support one guy and quite another to have a PF site support a whole staff.

If you're under 35, would you make a special trip to read a site like FiLife that is geared to your needs & interests financially?