Demand Media announces Pluck 4

Demand Media, the leader in distributed social media, have announced availability of the company's next generation Pluck social media platform. Utilizing a significantly extended architecture with full backwards compatibility, Demand Media brings to market the industry's first application server specifically built for integrated social media.

"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 organizations to rapidly offer broad-reaching and highly scalable social experiences."

Pluck software services are integrated into more than 400 leading digital destinations hosted by companies like the NFL, USA Today, Kraft and Lowe's, and deliver more than 3 billion social media interactions each month. Pluck 4 builds on the proven platform and comprehensive social applications which earlier this year won a perfect 5.0 out of 5.0 score from Forrester for feature breadth.With Pluck 4, organizations now also have features that include:

Presentation Engine: With easy access to a templating engine, HL, CSS, JavaScript, strings, images and more, Pluck 4 allows dramatic visual and feature customization while enabling search engine optimized (SEO) deployments.

Programmable APIs: Provides an Extensible RESTful Interface, allowing browser, server and mobile device requests - with a multitude of responses (XHL, 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.

Enterprise benefits of the Pluck 4 social application server include speed to market, deployment flexibility, and extended end user reach (via search, social bridging, mobile and more), along with proven scale and performance based on 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 Dave Panos, executive vice president of social media platforms 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 4 is generally available. For more information please visit pluck.com/products