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The Wall Street Journal has launched a widget on articles that allows you to see what your Facebook friend’s are reading. According to a report from the Associated Press, once you’ve opted into the feature you will see the widget when browsing WSJ, which will then display links to articles that are popular within your network (amongst other people that have added the application). The app is powered by Loomia, who is also launching on NBC.com and CNET.
Generally speaking, I think a “what are my friends reading” widget is a nice feature for news discovery. However, I’m not sure that The Wall Street Journal is the best partner for Loomia to roll this feature out on. Most WSJ content requires a paid subscription, which greatly reduces the number of people that can use the tool - although, if you visit the story via the widget, you can get access. Beyond that, the demographics of Facebook are still mostly college and high school students, who not only don’t have money to pay for a subscription, but probably aren’t frequent WSJ readers either.