Blog Post #3

Like most financial news sites, Bloomberg’s markets page features most of the site’s charts and graphs. Similar to Yahoo! or The Wall Street Journal, it includes a basic overview graph of indexes in the U.S., Asia and Europe.

With its audience in mind, Bloomberg’s markets page offers some useful tools for investors and professional market-watchers. Users can view the top (and worst) stock market performers of the day on the “Gainers & Losers” page, and the site’s “Earnings Calendar” keeps investors abreast of the latest financial reports.

Those interested in the stock market typically have a few companies they routinely check-in on, and as with other financial news sites, the first few letters of a company’s name or ticker symbol yield relevant options when typed in the site’s search bar. After a user chooses one of the suggestions, the site provides info about the company, such as its key statistics, stock prices, executives and a profile of the company. Members of the site can also add companies to a watchlist, where they could view all their investments in one place.

Bloomberg’s Personal Finance page offers some interesting tools as well. The page features a few calculators that let users input their own information to create their own data reports, like the retirement calculator.

The site’s broadcasts are largely traditional through the company’s television and radio programs. The site enables users to view live television and watch archived video clips, both in CNBC-style, talking-head format. The site also features a slew of radio shows and podcasts, and as with video, users can either listen live or choose (or download) clips or podcasts.

The site produces “less traditional” content as well. Also under the Personal Finance tab is a “Real Cost of” page, which does picture-with-text slideshows on several subjects, like the real cost of Easter. The Bloomberg “Insights” page includes several short, animated, PSA-style videos that are meant to give perspective and insight into major trends and events, such as the growing online-dating industry.

Bloomberg also makes use of blogs. Users can view personal pages for popular columnists/bloggers like Ezra Klein, big subjects like the site’s blogs on sustainability and technology, and a live blog – the site provides live-blog coverage of certain political events.

The site fosters community in a widely-used manner: comments. But the site’s magazine wing, Businessweek.com, includes a “discussed” tab in a “Most popular” box posted on the right of all its stories. When viewing recent stories, users can choose a filter option to see what stories have the most comments, and frequenters of the site could even see their user name listed on the “Top Commenters” list.