Yahoo Finance gets a face-lift

Yahoo Finance was set to get a face-lift on Monday with new interactive stock charts, improved message boards and business-related video clips from content partners.

In addition, Yahoo is offering Internet publishers the ability to easily add a stock chart, quotes and news headlines to their Web site.

The new Yahoo Finance beta site features a full-screen application that lets people add events--such as whether a company has had stock splits or dividends--with one click, see competitor charts, click and drag to customize a chart's time range, and type in specific dates.

Yahoo Finance message boards also will provide more information on postings, as well as the ability to rate messages and sort and filter messages based on ratings. Discussions appear as threaded conversations under topics as opposed to being listed chronologically.

The site also will feature videos on business and finance-related topics from partners including ABC.com, CNN.com, Forbes.com and SmartMoney. Editors will hand-pick the top videos for the front page and additional videos can be seen on a video page.

In addition, Web sites can easily download a free Flash-based Yahoo Finance Badge that will let them embed into their sites stock charts, quotes and news headlines from Yahoo Finance.

The bar was raised for financial Web sites when Google introduced Google Finance in March, featuring interactive charts correlated with news events and click-and-drop ease of use.

Yahoo Finance, which launched a decade ago, is also the only financial aggregator site to use direct feeds of stock quotes from major U.S. exchanges rather than get them from a third party, such as Reuters.