The provision of market-moving news and information in a machine-readable format has become a key battleground for market data firms as increasing volumes of stocks are executed by computer algorithms.

Bloomberg's BN Direct service launched last year and includes tracking of 20,000 economic indicators culled from government sources, press releases and Web sites. In addition, it tracks company announcements, rating changes and unpredictable events.

The technology analyses text to extract both key information - such as earnings and revenue figures from press releases in real-time - and to categorise text into easy-to-identify tags for topics, tickers and people.

Now the firm has added a story flow feature that indicates the "news heat" or most written about companies and topics by analysing more than 30,000 global sources.

In addition, it is introducing an analysis of the most read stories by Bloomberg terminal users, which includes market participants from top banks and investment firms.

Stefan Whitney, Bloomberg, says: "These news metrics may cause a trader or investor to rethink or alter a strategy or trading approach. This valuable information, which is derived from Bloomberg's exhaustive database of news sources and its unique user base, may alert a market participant to a market-moving event."

Last month Thomson Reuters extended its NewsScope Direct machine readable news service beyond New York to London and Chicago and has also recently expanded the service to include real-time analysis of company events. Meanwhile, Deutsche Börse recently acquired specialist outfit Need to Know News.