Demand Media Announces Pluck 4 in Europe

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Demand Media?, the leader in distributed social media, today announced the availability of the company?s next generation Pluck® social media platform across Europe. Recognising the increasing demand for social media that provides community applications with tangible results, Pluck 4 is the industry?s first application server specifically built for integrated social media.

The Pluck 4 social application server offers companies a fast and flexible solution, combining extended end user reach (via search, social bridging, mobile and more), with the proven scale and performance guaranteed by the Pluck platform.

?Social media has evolved at light speed since our first product release four years ago. Today, consumers expect sophisticated community applications to be part of every web site,? explained Stephanie Himoff, Vice President of European Sales and Business Development for Demand Media. ?Pluck 4 builds on the open and extensible strengths of the original platform, while providing new services. With Pluck 4, there is no compromise between rapid time-to-market and unparalleled flexibility.?

Pluck software services are integrated into more than 400 leading digital destinations hosted by companies like The Guardian, BSkyB, and Auto Trader, and enable more than 3 billion social media interactions each month. Pluck?s next generation platform, Pluck 4 builds on the proven platform and comprehensive social applications which earlier this year was awarded a perfect 5.0 out of 5.0 score from Forrester for feature breadth.*

Using Pluck 4, organisations now also have features that include:

• Presentation Engine: With easy access to a templating engine, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, strings, images and more, Pluck 4 allows dramatic visual and feature customisation while enabling search engine optimised (SEO) deployments.
• Programmable APIs: Provides an Extensible RESTful Interface, allowing browser, server and mobile device requests ? with a multitude of responses (XHTML, XML, JSON, etc.) ? via a single framework. Pluck 4 also includes a new Content Access API for lower level development work against its powerful Scripting Engine.
• Social Data Model: Leverages an accessible, 12 category and 150+ element schema tuned for rich social media experiences. With conversion tools for migrating numerous third party community solutions, the model has proven its versatility.
• Management Tools: Includes the Community Manager (for user, content and abuse management), the Analytics Manager (for activity reporting and ROI assessment) and the Application Manager (for visual development, controls, configs and more).
• Application Container: Offers a system to create, deploy, host and deliver custom applications. The Container leverages the same components and services that power Pluck?s core social applications, including the new Pluck 4 Comments which provides innovative features such as valued user highlights, threading, scores, friend filters and social bridging.

?Consistent with the maturation of the content management and e-commerce markets that drove corresponding app servers, social media has reached a point where enterprise customers require extensibility,? said Will Ballard, executive vice president, Technology & Engineering, Demand Media. ?Pluck 4 now uniquely provides a presentation engine, programmable APIs, a social data model, management tools, and an application container, enabling organisations to rapidly offer broad-reaching and highly scalable social experiences.?

Pluck 4 is now generally available throughout Europe. For more information please visit www.pluck.com/products

About Demand Media

As the leader in distributed social media, Demand Media? makes possible more than 3 billion conversations every month. The Demand Media platform harnesses the creativity of individuals to deliver valuable content and help websites grow by providing content and community features that consumers truly want. The privately held company was founded in May 2006 and is based in Santa Monica, CA, with offices in Bellevue, WA, Austin, TX, New York, NY and London, UK. For more information about Demand Media, Inc., please visit: www.demandmedia.com

* The Forrester Wave?: Community Platforms, January 9, 2009

© 2009 Demand Media, Inc.

Demand Media and Pluck are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Demand Media, Inc in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners.