On the earnings call, CEO Richard Rosenblatt ran down the latest on the company’s strategy, which of course consists of various content properties, social platforms, advertising and a domain registrar service. The company’s sites get 95 million uniques, he said.

“ehow was not affected,” by Google’s most recent freshness-related algorithm, he said.

You may recall that earlier this year, the company launched a content clean-up initiative for eHow. On the last quarter’s earnings call, the company reported that it had deleted about 300,000 eHow articles in addition to implementing its feedback tools and launching various partnerships.

There was no update on the number of articles deleted as of today, but he did say they are continuing to take more steps to improve content quality, including evolving Demand Studios (the content creation platform), increasing the variety of content (with a wider breadth of topics), new formats (such as photo-driven articles), rigorous fact checking, improved content recommendations, and applying things learned from its other content properties like LiveStrong and Cracked (which tend to have better reputations than eHow) to eHow itself. This means taking select passion areas and tapping different kinds of content formats.

He said they’re reducing the volume of new text content by over 50%. That’s in line with the recent (controversial) reduction in article assignments the company announced.

Rosenblatt also noted that they’re looking at expanding more internationally, adding that in the last two months, they launched eHow en Espanol and eHow Brazil.

The subject of that recent traffic glitch did come up. Rosenblatt reiterated that this was just a temporary technical server-related glitch that shouldn’t happen again. Everything was recovered.

The company has also emphasized its growing investment in video, including new YouTube channels, which they’ll start launching content for in early 2012.

About 33% of Q3′s revenue came from Google.

“We reported another strong quarter as we continue to build Demand Media’s foundation for long-term growth,” said CEO Richard Rosenblatt. “The Company is uniquely positioned to deliver data-driven professional content through its robust content publishing platform. We are now in the process of optimizing that platform while increasing our investment in video content and enhancing the quality, engagement and user experience of our sites.”

The report points out that last month, YouTube announced an original Channels initiative launching in 2012. Demand Media will be partnering with YouTube on three of these channels: eHow Home, eHow Pets & Animals, and LIVESTRONG.

eHow.com, the company says, is a top 20 site in the U.S., and had 71.5 million unique users worldwide in September.

The last time we talked to Demand Media, they told us they would have a progress report on the eHow quality clean-up initiative during today’s earnings call. We’ll see what more they have to say.

The call is scheduled for 5:00 Eastern. Stay tuned to WebProNews.

Here’s the release in its entirety:

 

“The technical issue has recently been remediated,” the company said, indicating this was not Panda-related. According to Business Insider, citing a “source familiar with the situation,” eHow’s traffic is already on the mend since the glitch was fixed.

The incident evidently had a negative effect on the company’s stock, but today, it’s on the way up. At the time of this writing, it’s up +0.19 at 5.83.

As you may know, over the last couple weeks, the company told writers it would be making less assignments available, and a new program called “First Look” was announced. This gives its highest rated writers first dibs on writing assignments.

Both moves are extensions of the company’s broader eHow clean-up initiative, which was revealed earlier this year. At last count, the company had deleted 300,000 articles. They also implemented a user feedback system designed to help them improve articles when the response is negative.

Demand has told us that it’s pleased with the progress of the clean-up initiative. We should hear more about all of this and its progress when the company has its earnings call next month.

Demand Media will report its third quarter earnings on November 7.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated from its original form. Just so everything’s clear right up front: Demand Media does have a new program called “First Look” but the company says another program that’s been discussed in various reader comments, “eHow Select” is “a scam”. Please see the end of the article for statements from Demand Media.

The company recently announced it would be cutting down on the number of writing assignments – something that a lot of writers will tell you was already happening. Now, it looks like it will be harder than ever for some of these writers to get their hands on assignments.

The email indicates that Demand is implementing a new program that gives its “highest-rated writer” first dibs on new assignments.

Thanks to reader Kim for sharing the email:

Studio Writers,

Jeremy Reed, SVP Editorial

Update: There was some question about the legitimacy of the email at first, as we had some trouble getting confirmation from Demand Media (which is not typical), but Noah Davis at Business Insider says he’s been able to confirm it, though he says too in his own article that he’s so far been unable to get further comment from the company thus far.

Information about the “First Look” program is scarce on the web. There is not even a post about it on the Demand Studios blog.

Finally, another reader, Geoff, shared a different email allegedly from eHow about something called “eHow Select”. This one says:

Dear eHow Select writers,
On behalf of the eHow Select project team, I would like to thank you for the articles submitted to the program so far. We are all extremely proud to be working with such a dedicated and passionate team of writers, as evidenced by the lowest rewrite and rejection percentages among all eHow sections.
Based on those encouraging numbers and on several other factors, we have decided to introduce a new feature that will allow you to nominate other writers for future inclusion in the program. At the bottom of each article published on eHow, you will now find a “Nominate” link that allows you, in effect, to vote for its author. The portfolio of writers who have been nominated by current eHow Select members will be reviewed by our team and, if their portfolio meets our quality standards, may be given access to eHow Select.
This new feature, however, does not affect the current recruitment procedure. Our team will continue to review non-nominated writers, as well as applications made through the HelpDesk.
We would also like to remind you of the confidentiality of the project. As outlined in the guidelines that were sent to you, discussing the project on third-party websites or in the general sections of the Demand Studios forums can lead to having your eHow Select privileges revoked.
Lydia
Content Manager eHow Select

Geoff says, “More proof that Demand Media deliberately LIES to its writers. It has a section called eHow Select that the company pretends doesn’t exist, yet it has many assignments available. DMS forbids the writers within this section from telling other writers about it. This at a time when most sections over at Demand have zero titles for writers to write.”

Some replies to this comment indicate that this email was fabricated to make DM look bad. Others are defending it.

At this point, it’s looking like the First Look program is legit, but questions remain about the eHow Select email.

We will update as soon as we get response from Demand Media.

Update: Demand Media’s Kristen Moore tells us about First Look:

“We’ve just announced First Look to our writing community, and the formal launch is planned for tomorrow. In short it’s a program that allows us to reward our highest rated writers. For writers who maintain an average structure score of 4.0 or higher over their last 50 articles, they’ll have advanced access to new assignments. They’ll be allowed to claim those assignments 48 hours before they’re released into the general Find Assignments pool. In order to keep it fair we will only allow those with First Look access to claim 10 assignments at one time.”

“This is all part of our ongoing focus on quality and expertise. Let me know if you have any questions about the program.”

She also tells us: “’eHow Select’ is indeed a scam. It’s not an eHow or Demand Media program.”

Many have expressed frustration. Some have gone so far as to accuse Demand Media of lying at worst or misleading at best. Others think such claims are way off base. In this article, we’ll take a look at these different points of view.

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments. And if you find this subject interesting, please don’t hesitate to share it on Stumbleupon, Facebook, Twitter, +1, etc.

A writer, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells WebProNews, “I’ve been writing for Demand Studios since 2009 and have only used the income for pocket money, however recently I intended to expand my writing with them. In May 2011 I qualified to write for eHow Money a specialized category for writers with professional experience and the appropriate credentials in addition to my current status as a general writer.”

“I retired as an Assistant Vice President in 2008 from a corporate career in Financial Services in mutual funds from a major financial institution,” they added. “I was a licensed registered principal and have over 30 years experience in financial services and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics. My attention was to fulfill a lifelong goal to pursue a fulltime writing career post-retirement. I’ve had extensive business writing experience so I qualified very easily for the general writing and subsequently eHow Money based on my writing ability, business experience and education.”

The writer tells us that they, along with may other Demand Studios writers received vague responses when expressing concern at the lack of assignments. They said they felt “they were being strung along, which is akin to lying.”

“They continually developed new writing categories (eHow Money [and] eHow Garden are examples) as the titles disappeared and the promises that they were providing a better writing experience for their freelance writers,” the writer tells us. “Specifically, shortly after I qualified for eHow Money I contacted the editorial staff because the titles for this category were drastically reduced, and questioned them about qualifying me for a category when the titles were rapidly disappearing. Their response was that they were sorry but working on getting titles out. This is basically the standard response [to] all of their writers when the quantity of titles are questioned. It’s almost as if all of the changes for ‘new writing opportunities’ were a coverup when they were actually taking away the writing opportunities at the same time.”

The writer says Demand Media raised the pay for eHow Money articles, but that there were “no articles to write”.

“Many of the writers were optimistic and waited patiently,” the writer says. “Some writers also encouraged others that more titles would be available via our writers’ forum. There were a significant number of writers earning enough money to pay a good portion of their bills…Writers sincerely believed that they could depend on Demand Studios and continued to write for them because they are one of the few online organizations that pay upfront.”

The writer says they expected this when Demand Media went public and the Panda Update came. “I instinctively knew this was going to be a disaster.”

“It is also very important for the writing community to understand that Demand Studios had and still has writers who provide them with content of the highest professional quality,” the writer adds.

“I’m done with them and will not devote my energy to a company any longer who has no respect for its writers,” the writer tells us. “They’re still making money tens of times over the amount they paid me and all of the other writers.”

This is just the perspective from one writer, but we have seen plenty of other similar tales. Noah Davis at Business Insider shares a response to the freelancer backlash from Demand Media’s Chief Revenue Officer Joanne Bradford: “It’s still one of the largest pools of writing assignments available in the world. We don’t feel like it’s that dramatic of a change because it’s not like every assignment was being taken.”

Our anonymous writer says the response is an “insult.” Davis says he heard from other writers that the quote was “hilarious to those of us who are still working for [Demand Studios].”

Bradford is also quoted as saying, “The folks that are more generalists and have written the short-form how-to articles are finding less assignments. This goes hand-in-hand with our quality improvement and focus on using people who have expertise about the topics they write about.”

Not all Demand Studios writers are so upset though. Some don’t feel that they’ve been misleading at all.

Ken Crawford of The Freelancer Today, for example, has been writing for Demand since July of 2009, and says Demand was his “bread and butter” for quite some time. He acknowledges that things have changed, but he still writes for Demand on a regular basis, he says.

“The perception of whether Demand lied to writers or not, depends on who you ask,” Crawford tells WebProNews. “To be honest, Demand never lied to anybody or made statements that promised one thing while delivering another. Many of the writers that are accusing Demand of lying are ones who are finding themselves without work. Many of these writers are ones who didn’t apply the guidelines, had high percentages of abandoned rewrites/rejections or were basically writing the thinnest content just to grab the $15 justifying it with ‘you get what you pay for.’ Granted $15 is not a lot for content, but if the writer agrees to the rate of pay they should still put out quality work. Nothing is hidden.”

“Demand has not hidden the fact that changes were coming,” he adds. “Even in the latest announcement, the people claiming lies only scanned the information instead of actually reading it. Ehow is not going away, but there will be less title availability. Face it there are only so many ways you can write ‘How To Boil an Egg’ before you finally have to move on to ‘How To Peel a Boiled Egg.’”

eHow has been talking about its content clean-up initiative for a good portion of the year. This includes the deletion of at least 300,000 articles and a feedback feature that tells the company when users are unsatisfied with content, so it can then be more heavily scrutinized and either deleted or edited as necessary.

“While Demand hasn’t come out and spelled out specifically what they are doing in detail, they haven’t outright lied to anybody,” says Crawford. “People make assumptions on limited knowledge. People make accusations out of fear and anger.”

“The work is still there,” he adds. “I, like many other writers, manage to keep my queue filled daily and write consistently. Sure there are issues with editing consistency and so forth, but the work is there for those that work within the system.”

In our previous article, we mentioned the potential financial impact on Demand Media. Is it possible that less assignments means less growth?

“My gut feeling is that this is a good move for Demand,” says Crawford. “It will ‘weed’ out writers who are simply there to put words on a screen for a quick buck. Demand is making efforts to match both writers and editors in their fields of expertise. It’s a growing process and one that is not without it’s challenges. But looking at it long-term, I believe it will benefit not only Demand Studios and it’s writers but also the reader. Less articles at the moment generated for eHow will bring better quality and, one would hope, more value to the reader.”

“Demand Studios is accountable to the shareholders and not just themselves,” he adds. “While the ‘creative’ plan to show profit over 5 years on content is nice, it is vital that they show profit now. It’s business. They will concentrate in areas that give more of a return on investment. Ehow is still a big part of that process, and as far as I can see it will continue to be a big part.”

Crawford also wanted to make one last point about his own position.

“People tend to think I’m a cheerleader or somehow stir the vat of the DMS Kool-Aid,” he says. “My only affiliation with Demand is that of a service provider, plain and simple. The fact is, Demand fills a void for writers. Unfortunately the way the system was set-up in the past, it also provided income for those who simply wanted to make a quick buck. Regardless if you agree to write for $15 or $100, the end result of a writer’s work should be the same. It’s about quality. It’s about bringing value to your client and the readers. If $15 is beneath you, don’t write for Demand Studios.”

A lot of writers apparently don’t feel like they have much of a choice.

Jennifer Mattern at AllFreelanceWriting.com writes, “I’ve also seen writers’ responses to this news. On one hand it’s difficult for me to have sympathy when we’ve spent so much time and energy here helping writers improve their freelance businesses. The information is out there — not only here, but from many great freelancers such as Lori Widmer, Anne Wayman, and Peter Bowerman, and the folks at Freelance Zone, Freelance Folder, and Freelance Switch. If you want to be a more successful freelance writer, you have seemingly endless information available to help you do that.”

“On the other hand, I can’t help but sympathize with some of these writers,” she says. “The news came somewhat suddenly and not long before the holidays. While it’s true no one should have been relying too heavily on any single client, content mill or not, I know they’ll have a tough road ahead as their own business models are forced into a period of transition.”

It’s not a simple situation. There are other opportunities out there for freelance writers though, and it’s clear that quality is a highly sought after quality to have. I suggest continue improving your skills and writing about what you know about. Prove to your prospective clients that they would be better off with your content.

Content can still goes a long way on the web.

What is your position on this discussion? Share your thoughts in the comments.

We’ve chronicled all of this throughout the past year, and you can view all of our coverage oh eHow here for more background.

We had a conversation with Jack Herrick, who used to run eHow before selling it to Demand Media about the direction the site is going in. We had talked to him in the past about eHow’s strategy vs. wikiHow‘s (Herrick’s current site) – basically the content farm vs. wiki approach and their relationships to content quality. He’s impressed with eHow’s current direction.

“Overall, I’m impressed with eHow’s new focus on quality,’ Herrick tells us. “Web readers win when publishers focus on quality over quantity. And when one of the highest volume publishers on the web turns more attention to quality, web users should crack open the bubbly. The old eHow focused on pleasing the mighty Google overlord. The new eHow is trying to convince consumers to create their own individual magazine on eHow and then share it with their social network. It’s a big shift.”

It’s worth noting that the “Google overlord” has taken a drastically different view of content farm-style content over the past year. That’s not to say that Google didn’t care about quality in the past, but the Panda update introduced this year, has made it more difficult for this type of content to do well in search.

“Just to be clear, wikiHow has always been going a different direction than eHow,” says Herrick. “At wikiHow, we’ve been working on building the world’s best how-to manual from day one. Instead of saturating the web with 3 million articles, we built ‘only’ 123,000 articles over 6 years. And all of our articles are being constantly improved via the magic of wiki editing. Our work is better today than it was 6 months ago and 6 months from now we will be even better.”

“eHow appears to be making 3 big shifts in their content production: They will be producing more videos, more slideshows, and more feature length articles,” he says. “The new prominence of slideshows indicates they are increasingly moving away from their initial focus on ‘how-to’ to a broader magazine-like media site.  For example the new eHow site ‘Shift,’ reminds me of a combination of iVillage meets Huffington Post meets Business Insider.  Instead of traditional how-tos they are producing click friendly slideshows like this one of “top 100 women on the move”.

“Media like this is much more likely to get shared on social networks than a useful but arguably boring how-to article,” says Herrick. “ An SEO bonus: If Google’s Panda algorithm measures time on site as a quality factor, time consuming media like slideshows and videos may boost overall search visibility for all of ‘old’ eHow.”

I’d add that the more that a piece of content is shared, the better it’s likely to do in search as well.

“eHow has increasingly produced feature articles with over 1,000 words and more research and fact checking than the arguably shallow 350-500 standard articles that make up the vast majority of their how-to library,” says Herrick. “I think these new feature articles are a big improvement. At wikiHow, we have always thought it makes sense to take as many words as necessary to adequately cover the topic.  Sometimes we write just a few hundred words to cover a simple topic such as: How to Make a Wi-Fi Booster Using Only a Beer Can or How to Peel a Kiwi.”

“Other times we need thousands of words to cover complex topics like: How to Survive in Federal Prison.”

“It’s good to see eHow finally recognizing that some topics need more depth than 500 words allows,” he says. “The Demand Media guys are smart. I’m sure this shift in strategy is based on a lot of user data.   I think it’s going to work well for them.”

“wikiHow on the other hand is sticking to our founding mission,” Herrick notes. “We have the not so humble ambition of building the world’s default how-to manual.  We’re going to keep using new technology and our fantastic community of volunteer editors to provide the best how-tos on the web. Our work is far from done.”

Do you think Demand Media is moving in the right direction? Let us know in the comments.

Eventually, Google’s Panda update, sometimes referred to as the “farmer” update caught up with eHow, but the damage wasn’t as bad as one could have imagined. However, as we told you about earlier this year, the company did begin a large effort to boost eHow’s reputation and content quality. This included new feedback tools for readers, partnerships for niche content, and the deletion/further editing of a lot of articles.

During Demand Media’s last earnings call, it said that it had already removed 300,000 articles. After a recent iteration of Google’s Panda update, we reached out to the company for comment, and VP, Corporate Communications Kristen Moore told us, “I can tell you that we’ve been really pleased with the pace and the results of the new initiatives we announced and implemented in the spring to ensure tighter controls around quality on eHow and across our studio model. We’ll be providing a more specific update on those initiatives and what our sites have seen relative to the Panda updates when we announce Q3 earnings in just a few weeks.”

Since then, Demand Media Studios has sent out the following email to writers and editors (hat tip to Noah Davis):

Dear Writers and Editors,
 
We realize there has been recent concern around assignment availability. We know many of you rely on Demand Media Studios as a regular income source and as a way to grow your careers. For those reasons and others, we want to be as transparent as we can about the future.
 
In just a few years, we’ve worked together to grow the eHow.com library to an astounding 3 million articles. While eHow has been the main publisher of content produced by DMS writers, we’ve also developed other writing outlets on our own properties like typeF.com and LIVESTRONG.COM as well as through partnerships like Chron.com and USAToday. With our eHow.com library already so comprehensive, we saw the opportunity to shift our focus to more targeted categories and other forms of content such as slide shows, video series and feature articles. Good examples of these new formats can be found on  eHow and LIVESTRONG.COM.
 
None of this would have been possible without having spent so many years working with you, our writers and editors, to build our comprehensive library.
 
Looking ahead, as we continue to publish articles for eHow and our other sites, we want to be sure we are building on what already exists, not replicating it. This is not to say we will stop assigning standard titles in How to and Topic View format for eHow.com. But it does mean that we will have fewer eHow.com assignments for the foreseeable future.
 
However, we will continue to add more publishers and sections as we’ve done over the years, and ultimately the work and opportunities will grow for our best writers and editors. We are also excited to completely execute on our vision of having the most qualified writers and editors working on titles within their areas of expertise.
 
In order for this to happen, we need to make sure of a few things:

We will also be putting additional focus on helping you grow within your fields. This means offering ways for you to gain exposure on our sites and new tools for you to promote yourself and your work. We will send additional updates and information on assignments going forward. We will also set up some new avenues for you to ask questions and offer feedback. For the time being, if you have any additional questions, please use this forum thread.
 
Best Regards,
Demand Media Studios Team

This, along with the aforementioned eHow content clean-up initiative, seems to signal a drastically different content strategy than what Demand Media has come to be known for – the “content farm” (or call it what you like) strategy. That’s a strategy, mind you, was generally about writing assignments based on what people are searching for, and including numerous articles on the same topics, covering a variety of different title options. The strategy worked for Google search visibility. No question about it. At least it did for a while. That doesn’t mean that they’re not assigning content based on “demand,” but it seems to be less about saturating the web with run of the mill content.

The company has also talked a lot this year about the increasing diversity in its traffic sources, and its earnings reports have indicated the company is not completely reliant on Google.

We reached out for further comment on the company’s evolving strategy, but they’d not comment on my specific questions. They did say, however, that they’ll be sharing more details in the weeks to come around the new tools they’ll be using to help promote writers, as mentioned in the email.

We’ll certainly be covering the Q3 report when it comes. It’s going to be interesting to hear more about the company’s post Panda content strategy. It may even provide some insight into how others impacted by the update may be able to recover.

Another angle to this whole thing is that a lot of people just lost a source of income, and from the sound of it some of them are taking it pretty hard. In this economy, that’s not hard to believe. In the comments of this article, for example, Vicky Hunter writes:

There were no articles available in the main eHow pool today for the first time ever. All but a few other specialty channels have been empty, as well. Demand’s thousands or writers are panicking on their forums. Crying, screaming, blaming, begging, fighting, pleading for help from fellow writers – even hinting at suicide. No matter what you think about them, you can’t help but feel some real pain for some of these writers. And Demand still won’t be honest about what’s going on, or when things will stabilize. Some of the jumpers are still hanging on at the site, waiting for things to get better, which, at best, means some few articles for some few lucky writers to grab each day.

The bottom must have dropped out, in terms of revenue, for this to happen. I assume the next earnings report will show this. The stock will really tank after that. I feel bad for the writers. Some were making $4,000+ a month, and many were able to keep families afloat during this bad economy – and now it’s all gone, like that – poof.

One major factor about cutting off these writing assignments is the potential loss of the growth curve, which could come back to haunt the company.

That said, in the last report, the company reported a 32% increase in revenue, with 76% growth in cash from operations. You have to remember that the Demand Media Studios isn’t Demand Media’s only source of revenue. Rosenblatt cited not only the company’s content and media business, but its registrar business as providing significant year-over-year growth. ““We plan to build on this momentum by expanding our brand advertising relationships and accelerating our content platform’s international and social media growth initiatives,” he said.

I guess we’ll find out more about those initiatives during the next call.

There are a lot of questions surrounding Demand’s shift in strategy. Has Demand Media taken too drastic an approach to improve quality? Are writers getting the short end of the stick? Is this going to hurt Demand Media in in the long run? Or is this what’s best for the company, and ultimately for search engine results?

We want to know what you think. Let us know in the comments.

Demand Media and its eHow property in particular were always part of the Google Panda update conversation. In fact, it was a major part of the discussion even before the update came to be known as Panda, and even before it was rolled out. eHow was often characterized as the poster child of content farms, despite Demand Media’s continued efforts to clean up its reputation and denials that it actually is a “content farm”.

Waves of astonishment rippled throughout the industry when Google finally launched its Panda update, supposedly targeting content farms, and eHow didn’t take a hit, but actually gained in search visibility. The update was even referred to as the “farmer” update throughout the industry before Google mentioned the “Panda” name in an interview.

Demand Media no doubt breathed a gigantic sigh of relief, as the initial update and the company’s IPO were interestingly close together on the timeline. But eHow (not to mention some other DM sites) would not escape the Panda for long. A later iteration struck a blow to eHow, and Demand Media inevitably announced a big clean-up initiative to help weed out the lower-quality content and get the site’s search visibility back up.

When asked for comment last week’s update, Kristen Moore VP, Corporate Communications at Demand Media gave us the following statement:

We don’t comment on whether or what kind of impact our sites see with each individual Panda update. As you know Google continually adjusts their algorithms, so the updates are pretty frequent.
 
I can tell you that we’ve been really pleased with the pace and the results of the new initiatives we announced and implemented in the spring to ensure tighter controls around quality on eHow and across our studio model. We’ll be providing a more specific update on those initiatives and what our sites have seen relative to the Panda updates when we announce Q3 earnings in just a few weeks.

Looking at SearchMetrics’ data it seems pretty clear that eHow was not “pandalized” this time around.

During the last earnings call in August, Demand Media indicated that Panda turned out to not be too big a blow to the company’s revenue. At the time, the company had said that 300,000 eHow articles had already been removed.

The new pluck comes with 14 pre-built social apps. The company says Forums is one of Pluck’s most popular apps. We asked Semelsberger to talk a little bit about the relevance of forums to today’s web, as social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc. have become so prevalent. Following is what he had to say.
 
“Forums technology definitely pre-dates the social tools you mention, but forums haven’t remotely been superseded by Facebook et al. We would argue that forums serve a purpose that these other tools don’t. We and our brand customers certainly value what the social tools deliver – we offer applications with similar functionality as part of Pluck – but we appreciate the reasons that consumers continue to like forums.”

“When we look at companies who are good at powering and channeling customer passion, it’s clear that Forums have a place. Take the Dallas Cowboys for example. Their Facebook Discussions only had ~2K posts in 18 months, even though they had more than 1MM Facebook Fans (~0.002 posts/fan). Their web-based forums had more than ~750K posts from ~125K members in the same time period (~6 posts/fan). Realizing that people love to engage deeply with the Cowboys on their website (3000x more posts/fan), they replaced their Facebook Discussions with Pluck Forums, enabling fans to have a consistent read/write experience across the web and Facebook.”
 
“Forums scale. They have a structure that supports enduring, lengthy, multi-threaded conversations, which some of the social tools you mention can’t replicate. Forum content is organized by topic and sub-topic, which makes forums content easy to navigate even when the volumes of interactions are enormous. We power the forums at Runners World, for example, which have accumulated millions of posts over tens of thousands of topics, but the volume of content hasn’t constrained participation in the least. Nearly 3 million AARP members use Pluck Forums to talk about an enormous variety of topics. The Knot, a site dedicated to brides and weddings, has over 8 ½ million Pluck Forums users.”
 
“In our experience, another reason forums are attractive to our brand customers is because it is so easy and natural for their community management staff to be part of the forums conversation. Brands that do this tend to want to exercise some control over the tenor of the conversation, or want to convey authority and credibility among members of their core audience. This certainly is hard to do in some of the social tools’ ‘frontier towns.’

Forums are more likely to be of persistent value to both our brand customers and their community members. Lots of forums content – discussions of the best way to light a family photo shoot, for example – will never go out of date.”
 
“In general, we see that Forums work extraordinarily well for things like category discussions (for digital retailers), Q&A and general advice (e.g. Runner’s World and the Knot have very vibrant Forums). With Pluck 5 we’ve given Pluck Forums a lot of versatility beyond the native capabilities of generic forums. Brands can easily configure Pluck Forums so that it works as a Question and Answer application, for example, which is attractive to digital retailers. We’ve added Polls as a Pluck Forums feature, which lets consumers or staff members inject structured queries into ongoing topical conversations. We’ve added our Trust Filters to Pluck Forums, which gives consumers the ability to ascertain who among many Forums participants are their friends, are noted authorities or are highly regarded contributors.”

For more on the benefits of forums, read these articles:

Are forums and Q&A sites more important to search now?

Could forums be more valuable to your brand than Facebook/Twitter?

Google gives forums more links on SERPs

Forums are relevant in social media marketing

In addition to launching some new applications within Pluck, the company has redesigned some of the old ones. The new version also sports ten different engines. There are discovery engines like: Pluck Participation, Recommendation and Reputation Engines present timely, relevant information. There are exchange engines like: Pluck Relation, Notification, Connection and Syndication Engines drive personalized, targeted communication. Finally there are management engines including: Pluck Identification, Localization and Moderation Engines power robust control for multiple roles, spanning customers to moderators.

WebProNews reached out to Steve Semelsberger, SVP and GM of Social Solutions at Demand Media, who told us some more about these engines. Following is what he told us about them.

“In general, consumers who participate in a Pluck community interact with some combination of our fourteen Pluck Applications (Forums, Blogs, Comments, etc.). What consumers don’t see is the ten Engines that power our Applications. Our ten Engines, grouped as Discovery, Exchange and Management functional families, drive experiences available through the Pluck API, including Applications and Collections. Discovery Engines present timely, relevant information.”

“Each of the ten Pluck 5 Engines powers a particular aspect of community – social reputation, for example, or localization – which can be manifested in any of Pluck’s pre-built Applications. For example, the Participation Engine highlights online community member presence. The Recommendation Engine captures and serves recent and scored items. The Reputation Engine manages points, badges, rewards and more. The Engines are also accessible to developers through the Pluck API, which gives brands the ability to modify how our Applications function or even to create entirely new Applications.”
 
“Our ten Engines naturally fall into three families, which you refer to in your question. The Discovery Engines surface community information, about which community members are present (Participation Engine), which pieces of content are new or have been reacted to (Recommendation Engine), and who among the community is active, respected, or influential (Reputation Engine).”
 
“Exchange Engines support personalized, targeted communications that help facilitate communication inside the community and from the community to external social destinations and back. The Relation Engine authorizes following and friendship management within Pluck services. The Notification Engine manages email and other updates. The Connection Engine makes it easy for community members to bind their accounts from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. The Syndication Engine manages how content is delivered to, and shared with, third-party services.”
 
“Finally, the Management Engines power control across roles – community members to moderators to business owners and provide oversight of and control over various aspects of a Pluck community. The Identification Engine manages single sign-on authentication against social, proprietary and Pluck services. The Localization Engine enables one instance of the Pluck platform to serve multiple language experiences simultaneously. The Moderation Engine handles key features like user tiers, blocks, filters, routing, listening and more. More information on Engines is available on our website, including detailed pages for each Engine that describe uses and benefits.”

“Our Applications are built on top of these engines and interact with them in a live community. The Engines in turn rely on the Pluck platform’s underlying Technology (with its Data, Presentation, Performance and Processing layers).”
 
“We tend to do business with large brands that have a culture that predisposes them to customized and tailored systems. They bring this same predisposition to their use of Pluck. By making all of the capabilities of our Engines accessible to their developers, through the Pluck API, our brand customers can create precisely the community experience that meets their business objectives. Our best and most successful customers have taken full advantage of this customizability and have delivered a community that is unique to them, is consistent with their brand, attracts their core audience and cultivates the precise passions and experiences that this core audience demands, all in the interest of particular business outcomes.”

In its most recent earnings report, Demand Media reported a 32% increase in revenue. While perhaps known best as a content company, the company generates revenue from its social and registrar businesses as well. Pluck is obviously a key part of the company’s social strategy, and clearly Demand is very serious about improving that.