Good times, bad times, you know I've had my share.
-- Robert Plant discourses on economic theory, Led Zeppelin

The kids are alright, and they have as keen an interest in money issues as anyone not dwelling in the 18-29 age bracket. Chris Jolley, group manager for the Financial Product Group and general overseer of MSN Money, told WebProNews in a phone interview.

That younger audience looks more to personal finance topics than investing, though they hold interests in the latter. High gas prices and a general feeling of economic malaise drive them to look at topical items holding an immediate impact.

One example, How To Fight 5 Food Budget Killers, helped MSN Money kick its May 2008 traffic to 15.7 million (per Nielsen//NetRatings), a figure Jolley said was a record for the site. The article noted the inflated pricing for five foodstuffs (flour being the worst) and ways to find some savings in buying them.

An even bigger draw picked up on a theme from 2007. The Customer Service Hall of Shame earned a lot of comments in 2008 at MSN Money’s forums, just as it did last year.

Jolley said MSN Money enjoys a key point of difference compared to other finance sites, as its access to editorial content and an ability to blend calculators and tools with articles make its work contextually relevant from start to finish. The current economy should ensure a steady stream of visitors to that work.

From neighborhood homeowners to professional football players, no one gets a free pass from the grifting scum who live to take advantage of others. Until the happy day arrives when these creeps receive a one-time appointment with a greased and sharpened guillotine blade, people must rely on themselves to thwart these scamsters.

(For those of you horrified at the prospect of beheading career criminals, pretend it’s a rubber blade that’ll bounce on impact and give onlookers a hearty chuckle. Everyone else, feel free to suggest which content network should host the streaming vids of the punishment being meted out.)

To help people recognize when someone besides the oil companies and the taxman may be robbing them of hard-earned wages, a new video series on MSN Money offers help. Hosted by the PBS MoneyTrack duo of investing pro Pam Krueger and TV personality Jack Gallagher, the ‘Scam Alert’ series already has a few videos available for viewing.

Chris Jolley, group manager of the Financial Products Group at Microsoft, called the addition of ‘Scam Alert’ a further expansion of a growing collection of high-quality multimedia for MSN Money. “Pam and Jack have years of experience helping millions of people become more aware of their finances, and we are thrilled to bring them on board,” Jolley said in a statement.

MSN Money has quietly grown into a solid property for Microsoft’s web endeavors. We talked with Jolley in December 2007 about MSN Money’s aims for multimedia and other topics; find that discussion on WebProNews.

After spending some time paging through parts of MSN Money while chatting with Jolley, we can see his point. The site does have some nice data integration from the sources that someone researching financial info would turn to individually.

The consumer focus of MSN Money probably made it easier for investors to keep heading to the site that dominates the online world of financial information. Yahoo Finance has been planted atop that list for quite some time.

MSN Money has its appeals, and Jolley wanted to bring them to our attention (and to yours by proxy, of course.) He started off by citing unique content, written by folks like Jim Jubak.

A couple of gems reside in the MSN Money list of Investment Tools. The Stock Research Wizard pulls information from Zacks Investment Research, comScore, and Reuters to build a profile of a company and its stock.

Stock history, price targets, and catalysts preceded an interesting comparison feature. Visitors can quickly bring up a comparison of a stock and two others. Stacked against each other, people see how the stocks compare in estimates to gain, shares priced cheapest relative to earnings, and other factors.

Exchange-traded funds have been around for a few years, and have gained a section on MSN Money. On the research page about them, visitors can easily see the winners and losers, and how various asset classes have been performing.

Jolley told us multimedia, as in videos, will be one of the ways Microsoft has in mind to bolster the site and gain against Yahoo Finance. These likely have space selected for them on the MSN Money homepage as well as other pages throughout the site.

MSN Money doesn’t go for the muted colors like the Wall Street Journal or even Yahoo Finance use. That could be part of the public perception, but MSN Money enjoys significant traffic now. They need to get more to overcome Yahoo and stave off the challenge of AOL Finance and other sites.

Here is analysis from Hitwise for US visits to Business & Finance sites for the week ending 12/15/2007: