WalletPop doesn't stand out

Anders Bylund of Ars Technica pens a critique of the new personal finance news Web site WalletPop and concludes that it could use some improvement.

Bylund writes, “WalletPop, as the new site is known, features a page design all its own, stripped bare of the usual set of links to other AOL properties like webmail, sports news, and so on. Instead, there’s a barrage of consumer-oriented financial tools such as loan calculators, deal finders, and retirement savings advice. But calling them ‘tools’ might be stretching the material a bit thin, because apart from the quite adequate assortment of calculators, it’s all a big heap of plain-Jane articles slotted into categories by simple tags.Â

“The real meat of WalletPop, then, is the article feed. Apart from a blog of its own, where all the original stuff here comes from, AOL draws on stories from Consumer Reports, Kiplinger, Bankrate, CNBC, Smart Money, and MainStreet.com. The blog posts tend to be of the short and sweet variety so far, where a story from non-partner sources like the NY Times or Guardian gets wrapped in 300 words or so and some advertising. In short, basic blog stuff.

“I don’t know if AOL will find new audiences with this site, or whether you’ll find the material so compelling that you abandon Yahoo Finance, Motley Fool, or whatever other source you go to for personal finance advice today. WalletPop does a good job of pulling together stories from across the net in one convenient place, and maybe you’re better off thinking of it as a fat news feed, packed with ads and a layout that can get tiresome for long articles.”

Read more here.