MarketWatch Launches Facebook-Like Features

By: E&P Staff Dow Jones & Co.'s MarketWatch.com financial news service is going all Facebook on its audience of investors and businesspeople.

MarketWatch on Monday launched MarketWatch Community with tools that -- very much like Facebook and other community-building services that first took off among teenagers and college kids -- allow registered users to build profiles and networks of friends, sharing news, commentary, and even stock pricing predictions.

MarketWatch is putting a Community tool, or widget, to the right of every article, providing, it said, a "live view of the business stories, stocks and financial topics that are resonating most with users."

"In addition to letting readers directly add comments, recommendations and tags to articles, the service allows users to build networks of friends, find other users based on their level and nature of community participation, and gain points for correctly predicting share price movements," MarketWatch said. "Users can track and organize their community activity on profile pages, which they can personalize with images and bios."

MarketWatch General Manager Jim Bernard said beta testing of Community showed increases in user loyalty, satisfaction, and length of visitors.