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Investors are eager for Facebook to start trading later this week, and money is already pouring into social-networking stocks.

Stocks in the industry are up by an average of 5 percent today, according to our new researchLAB analysis tool (see partial screen shot below). That makes it the strongest group of the session so far, as the broader market churns with a gain of less than 0.5 percent.

Renren, often touted as China's version of Facebook, rallied 10 percent and is leading the group higher. The company reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue yesterday afternoon, fueled by a surge in online gaming.

Zynga, which makes social-networking games including Facebook's FarmVille, is also leaping by almost 8 percent as investors champ at the bit for the Mark Zuckerberg's company to go public.

FB originally expected to sell shares for $28 to $35, but raised that range to $34-38 last night amid huge investor demand. That translates into a total valuation of about $100 billion.

The stock will join researchLAB's list of social-networking stocks as soon as it begins trading. Despite major volatility in most of the names, the group has outperformed the market so far this year, with a 21 percent gain.

(Screen shot courtesy of researchLAB )

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