Demand Media Announces Upgraded and Expanded Pluck Integrated Community Platform

Demand Media today announced a major extension of its Pluck integrated community platform (Pluck 5). Pluck 5 includes a number of new and improved capabilities that enable brands to foster customer engagement, facilitate customer advocacy and accelerate conversion, all while producing significant customer, product and market insights. More than 500 of the world’s leading brands, including AARP, Kraft, NFL, NPR, Target, USA Today and Whole Foods, rely on Pluck to support communities that deliver these business outcomes.

With this new release, Pluck offers greater out-of-the-box breadth, now providing 14 pre-built social applications. In addition to entirely new applications, Pluck has entirely redesigned and significantly extended Forums, one of its most popular applications. And Pluck 5 includes new themes, optimized for Web, mobile and social infusion. The Pluck Applications, grouped by functional families, now are:

• Feedback Applications: Pluck Reactions, Ratings, Polls, Comments and Reviews can be used singularly or in any combination to drive valued customer perspectives.
• Contribution Applications: Pluck Blogs, Galleries and Contests work across audience groups and media types.
• Communication Applications: Pluck Forums, Groups, Messages and Shares enable rich customer conversations.
• Representation Applications: Pluck Social Sign-On and Personas are the hub of a customer’s community presence.

Pluck 5 enhances the platform’s flexibility. With 428 social components now available through the Pluck API – and accessible via six SDKs – Pluck makes it easy for brands to offer a seamless and pervasive community experience, tailored to customers, and available across Web, mobile and social channels. The latest version of the platform also boasts ten Pluck Engines, a collection of powerful Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) assets. These Engines are:

• Discovery Engines: Pluck Participation, Recommendation and Reputation Engines present timely, relevant information.
• Exchange Engines: Pluck Relation, Notification, Connection and Syndication Engines drive personalized, targeted communication.
• Management Engines: Pluck Identification, Localization and Moderation Engines power robust control for multiple roles, spanning customers to moderators.

Beyond their role in supplying Pluck Applications’ underlying functionality, Pluck Engines enable Collections. Collections, like Pluck Applications, feature pre-built widgets. Collections also highlight the best of community elements, including: Most, Highest, Lists, and Leaders. With Pluck 5, there are now seven major Collections available, across three functional families: Promotion, Information and Directions.

Community managers and moderators manage Pluck Applications, Engines and Collections using the platform’s four Pluck Workbenches (Community, Moderation, Application and Analytics), demonstrated to support Pluck customers’ 30 million registered community members, and more than a billion page views each month.

Finally, Pluck continues to deliver world-class performance. Built on proven technology, Pluck has demonstrated speed (hundreds of millisecond round-trip response times), scale (managing approximately 10K RPS for single customers) and stability (consistently exceeding customer SLAs).

"Pluck 5 represents a major step forward,” said Steve Semelsberger, senior vice president & GM of Social Solutions, Demand Media. "Arguably the broadest, most flexible, best performing community platform on the market is now even stronger. Six SDKs, 10 Engines, 14 Applications and 428 Social Components enable the best brands to deliver high-impact social media experiences.”

Pluck 5 will be generally available in early Q4 2011.

About Demand Media

Demand Media, Inc. (NYSE: DMD) is a leading content and social media company. Through brands like eHow, LIVESTRONG.COM, Cracked and typeF, Demand Media informs and entertains one of the Internet’s largest audiences, helps advertisers find innovative ways to engage with their customers and enables publishers to expand their online presence. Headquartered in Santa Monica, CA, Demand Media has offices in Kirkland, WA; Austin, TX; Chicago, IL; New York, NY; London, UK; and Buenos Aires, AR. For more information about Demand Media, visit: www.demandmedia.com