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“Forums technology definitely pre-dates the social tools you mention, but forums haven’t remotely been superseded by Facebook et al.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.

Among the new tools are ways for software developers to provide native experiences and streamline the creation of community features, the company says. Software development kits (SDKs) built on Pluck’s APIs are optimized for languages like Objective-C, which is often used for iOS apps, and Java Android apps. Developers also get access to app templates.

“We want to help brand marketers engage their customers on every digital channel in their social mix,” said Steve Semelsberger, SVP and GM of social solutions for Demand Media. “We’ve recently given marketers the ability to embed Pluck applications in branded Facebook pages. Now we are making it easier for them to add community to their mobile experiences.”

The Facebook bit is a reference to the company’s partnership with Buddy Media, announced last month, which sees the two companies teaming up on Facebook Page apps.

With the Buddy Media platform, Pluck customers can embed the Pluck Forums running on their sites directly into their Facebook Pages. “This allows you to bring the conversation already happening on your own sites to Facebook where a significant portion of your consumers and fans spend their time,” said Pluck VP, Marketing Jason Jaynes. “Even better, it allows your consumers and fans to engage in the conversation without ever leaving Facebook.”

With the features, users can either create a new account on the brand’s domain or use Facebook to sign in.

The addition of mobile app support should greatly expand the experience, as brands often launch multiple apps for different purposes.

Buddy Media has built a business out of creating Facebook tools for businesses, and it counts Target, Johnson & Johnson, ABC, and many other big brands among its clients.

Pluck VP, Marketing Jason Jaynes explains, “Our first application for Facebook pages, Pluck Forums is available starting today. Using the Buddy Media platform you can now quickly embed the Pluck Forums running on your site directly into your Facebook page. This allows you to bring the conversation already happening on your own sites to Facebook where a significant portion of your consumers and fans spend their time. Even better, it allows your consumers and fans to engage in the conversation without ever leaving Facebook.”

This is similar to how Facebook’s new comments system operates, but this is more than just a blog comments system. Pluck points to an example of the platform in use by the Dallas Cowboys, which have a fan community set up, in which fans can interact (via the same conversation) from the Cowboys’ site or from their Facebook Page.

“This announcement builds on our history of working with Facebook,” he adds. “We have been a close partner with Facebook since we launched our integration with Facebook Connect in 2008. Since then, we were the first community platform to integrate with Facebook for Websites in 2010 and now we are the first community platform to enable seamless conversations across your own website and your Facebook page.”

Last week, Demand Media announced its acquisition of CoverItLive, a live event coverage platform.

CoveritLive lets audiences of events engage in real-time, provides instant reader polling, and contains Q&A capabilities (which could be helpful in itself for Demand, considering the the company’s Q&A site AnswerBag was recently hit by Google’s algorithm update). 

"CoveritLive really reflects our mission as a company – publishing what the world wants to know and share," says Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt. "Consumers around the world are tuning in by the millions to participate in live events powered by CoveritLive, collectively spending over a billion minutes on the platform each month. CoveritLive’s live event platform helps us continue to work towards that mission, building on both our social publishing model and our social media product offering with a platform that offers proven value to both brands and consumers."

Some noteworthy tweets from Rosenblatt about CoveritLive:

It looks like the CoveritLive team will be sticking around, and a big product upgrade is apparently on the way:

Demand Media and CoveritLive were already strategic partners. The two companies have worked together since 2009, with Demand Media even having a minority stake in CoveritLive. The product will become part of Pluck, Demand Media’s social platform. Pluck itself is already used by a lot of major brands:

"Like Demand Media, we started CoveritLive to help fill the gaps in online content. We saw an opportunity to cover live events in a way that no one had before by combining talented writers, multimedia and two way engagement via comments and polls," said CoveritLive President and Founder Keith McSpurren.  "As a Demand Media partner, our joint customers have seen the value of combining our service with Pluck’s integrated community platform. It’s a powerful combination that helps marketers engage consumers before, during and after an event."

According to Demand Media, events hosted on CoveritLive attract an audience of over 60 million people every month, 60% of which comes from outside the United States. The company has been talking about expanding more internationally, so this acquisition should help with that too. 

Financial terms of the acquisition were not revealed. 

Earlier this week, Demand Media announced a partnership with Rachael Ray on creating food content for eHow. 

Taking a hint from eBay’s ranking format, Pluck Review’s enhancements adds badges and leaderboards for their reviewers, which will make them stand out to potential Pluck users.  The badges also serve as a method of trust for psychological reasons.  If you give the appearance of competence and experience, users will be more apt to trust the service.

Steve Semelsberger, GM of Social Solutions for Demand Media, envisions something similar, “Pluck Reviews empowers consumers to leverage trusted friends and experts to cut through online clutter.  Users can quickly identify product perspectives from people they know or respect.”

Currently, Pluck Reviews can be found on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  They also appear in organic search results, increasing user confidence even more.

As it stands, confidence in Pluck Reviews should already be high. Companies employing the review service are some of the more popular businesses around.  For instance, Best Buy, Kraft Foods, Lowe’s, the NFL (a future use for Pluck — rank players for fantasy football purposes), Southwest Airlines and Whole Foods all make use of the Pluck Review system.

When you think of Demand Media, you probably think about Demand Studios, the company’s content production arm, and the sites it powers – sites like Cracked, eHow, LiveStrong, etc. These sites have enormous reach in themselves, but Demand’s new announcement has much bigger implications.

The announcement is of Facebook Open Graph integration with Demand Media’s Pluck service. Pluck is a social media platform service that is used by a slew of major brands around the world in varying capacities – things like powering reader comments and interaction with content. It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re familiar with Pluck itself, because there’s no way you’re not familiar with some of the brands that utilize it. Take a look:

That’s a pretty good chunk of the web, no? Add to that, the fact that consumers are increasingly engaging with brands online. Granted, just because the brands listed use Pluck, doesn’t mean they will have to use certain functions related to the Facebook integration, but one can only assume that most of them will use them in some capacity, given the traffic and engagement benefits.

Pluck already claims to generate 3+ billion social interactions a month. How do you think enhanced Facebook integration will affect that?

Of course Demand Media’s own content properties utilize Pluck, and Jaynes tells me that the company views Facebook’s Open Graph as just "as important" as search to the discoverability of Demand Media content.

Pluck is extending its Pluck 4 Comments and Pluck 4 Persona applications. "Our comment application recognizes the user is logged into facebook, and that the user’s not logged into USAToday," Jaynes explains giving a hypothetical example (USAToday may or may not use the feature). We don’t know who you are, but we can give you the ability to comment on the article." Users will go through a quick connection with Pluck’s Facebook app, and the comment will be posted on the site as well as on their Facebook Wall.

Pluck is also giving users the ability to automatically create a Pluck persona powered by their Facebook data. The goal, Jaynes says is to "lower the barrier of entry" for the user to participate socially on the local site. He gives more details about Pluck’s plan to integrate with Facebook here.

 Dave Panos – CEO Pluck.com

Pluck and Demand both slot themselves within the wide category of social media.  Dave Panos, the CEO of Pluck and new executive vice president of Demand, states, "The combined expertise of our two companies in platform technology development, content creation and community management is truly unmatched."

The Guardian Unlimited, Hearst Corporation, and Fox, in addition to the three giants named earlier, should be among the first to see if that’s the case.  Panos used the phrase "monetizable content," so they’re sure to be looking for more than aesthetic upgrades and smoother service.

Elsewhere on the money front, Rafat Ali reports that Pluck raised approximately $17 million during the course of its independent run.  Ali also puts its acquisition price in the neighborhood of $70 million ($67 million, to be exact), which is consistent with several other reports.

Finally, it appears as if neither Pluck nor Demand Media will be making any layoffs or corporate relocations due to the sale.

This does, we’ll admit, sound a little steep.  Want an economic indicator?  In the past month, Google’s stock has dropped about $70.  How about something regarding Pluck’s prominence?  A search for the word on Wikipedia leads to an article discussing hair removal.

Still, Pluck’s customers include Reuters, News Corp., and in a deal announced earlier today, the Guardian.  Discovery Communications, Conde Nast, and the Washington Post are also on an impressive list of "success stories."

So, working on name association alone, $75 million may not be out of the question.  Also, Rafat Ali writes, "Potential buyers include the likes of AOL and Microsoft, and we are told the company has received at least one offer in the range."

We’ll see where this leads, but some patience may be needed – no one’s publicized or discussed any timeframes associated with the sale.

Pluck’s blog syndication network, BlogBurst, acts as a conduit between traditional media sources, such as newspapers, and a library of over 2800 hand-picked blogs -all with the purpose of enhancing traditional journalism by adding a touch of social media.

BlogBurst syndicated blogs are already being integrated into the Reuters network. In the coming weeks, BlogBurst will be offered to media partners who use Reuters content as part of their own news services.

Chris Ahearn, Reuters Media President, comments on the deal, “With Pluck, we will help our worldwide media partners offer their readers smart and fast access to the best in the blogosphere. This is part of Reuters continuing strategy to embrace new digital platforms, including user-generated and moderated content as well as community tools, to deliver next-generation news and information.”

Dave Panos, Pluck Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, adds, “This alliance with Reuters will deliver the most extensive network of blog content through the world’s largest international news and financial information source. The combined service will provide a turnkey solution for traditional media companies who want to deliver a richer and more personalized news and information experience to their audience.”

This is the question on my mind. How does BlogBurst choose which blogs it syndicates? Apparently the company has an internal system for determining whom the “top bloggers” are, but what sort of criteria must a blogger meet to measure to BlogBurst’s syndication standards?

Do they look at straight statistics like visitors and page views? Is there a focus on the size of a particular blog’s community, particularly the volume of comments received? Does the total amount of advertising revenue generated by the blog play any role in BlogBurst’s decision whether or not to syndicate?

Mainstream syndication for a blog that is already generating healthy revenues from advertising could be the springboard into untold bogging profits. Consequently, it will be paramount for A-list bloggers to keep a close eye on which blogs get picked up by BlogBurst, and ascertain what criteria may have been met in order to merit syndication.

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Joe is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.