In the late ’90s, MarketWatch stormed on the scene and quickly became one of the top financial media outlets on the web. Twelve years later, Editor-in-Chief David Callaway is looking to make MarketWatch a recognized brand across the globe.

I spoke with David about where MarketWatch is headed, how they plan to get there, and the role of social media during the process …

Damien Hoffman: David, with the internet creating a very competitive landscape, how will you keep MarketWatch on the leading edge of financial journalism?

David:  We need to expand our audience. MarketWatch has been around for twelve years now, so our audience in the US is mostly set.  Our audience is a hundred million people who own stocks or mutual funds in the US.  However, online financial news is only getting a small fraction of that.  So, there is a lot of room for growth.

Growing internationally is really where we need to focus.  We need to get our name out there.  We have journalists in Europe and Asia.  In the Middle East we have somebody, but we still have a very young brand name when compared to the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

Rupert Murdoch is always fond of saying there is a whole generation of people moving into the middle class who are going to want to consume financial products.  I subscribe to that theory and think there’s an opportunity for MarketWatch in the next ten years to become more a brand name in Europe and Asia.

Damien: Do you plan to create partnerships with preexisting outlets abroad, or are you building everything from the ground up?

David:  About eighteen percent of our total traffic is outside the US mostly — but not exclusively — in the English speaking countries such as the UK, Canada, Australia, China, and Germany.  During the first ten years of MarketWatch’s existence, most of those people have been investors or people interested to see what’s going on in the US.  Likewise, our US readers have been interested in what we’re doing in China because they’re interested in buying Chinese Internet stocks or Macau gambling stocks.  For us to see some scalable growth we need to start covering stuff for Europeans in Europe and for Asians in Asia.

The way to do that is twofold:  One way is through the News Corp (NWS) network.  For example, Dow Jones has a global name and we’ve been able to establish correspondence with folks in those outlets fairly easily.  Now with News Corp running the show, doing things with Sky News is a lot easier for our London team and doing stuff in Asia is a lot easier with the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia.

Another way is through partnerships.  We can become part of established local media and get our brand name out there.  That’s probably a good strategy.

Damien: How do you see social media playing a role in that process?

David:  It’s huge and getting bigger by the moment.  I don’t know where we’re going to be five years from now, but five years ago, MarketWatch was on only AOL, MSN (MSFT), and Yahoo Finance (YHOO).  However, now we get a ton of traffic from Google (GOOG) and we’re getting a large and growing traffic from places like Twitter and Facebook.  As far as I can see, those platforms are going to continue growing for the time being.  People are exchanging news and swapping stories on Twitter and Facebook and we need to be there.

Then there’s video.  Back in the dark ages in 2001-2002, we had discussions at MarketWatch about whether we should kill video because it was a small product and it wasn’t making much money.  Every year we would have management meetings and the guy who was in charge video would argue, “This is going to be the year video takes off!”

Of course, it never really took off until about 2005.  Then YouTube hit.  Like it or not, video is a major presence in online storytelling and every news site must be a part of it.

The traffic figures are still relatively small compared to overall traffic, but it is becoming a preferred way people access news and stories — certainly a preferred way for advertising.  So, we’ve got a huge video commitment with the Wall Street Journal network.  Our video team operates with the whole network.

Damien: On a more philosophical level, what is your opinion regarding information online? Some people claim the internet is cluttering the world with noise rather than original journalism.

David:  MarketWatch has about a hundred journalists working for us.  We have created original news from the very beginning.  So when I hear a newspaper editor saying, “The only news you see on the Internet comes from newspapers,” that’s crazy.  A lot of direct publishing is happening on the net.

Also, we have the same ethics, the same newsroom practices and priorities as most of the major newspapers in terms of developing, editing, publishing, and delivering news.  We just do it straight to the web instead of on paper first.  That’s the only difference.

Damien: Dave, thanks for sharing your thoughts about where your organization is headed and how you contribute to the financial media.

David:  Anytime. You guys are making quite a splash. Keep it up.