Demand Media Delivers Pluck Social Media Platform for IBM WebSphere Commerce 7 Customers

AUSTIN, Texas – January 29, 2010 – Demand Media, provider of the industry-leading Pluck social media tools to retailers and brands, today announced that its platform is integrated with WebSphere Commerce 7 to offer social commerce capabilities to IBM’s customer base. With this seamless implementation, retailers can leverage social media and online social networks to bring brand and product discussions back to the retailer's site and to help convert them into transactions.

As retailers take a broader perspective on the potential power of their online destination, many are looking to social media as part of a proven formula to grow unique visitors to their sites, increase engagement and conversion rates, and lower operational costs. Dubbed “social commerce,” this is the term that describes how retailers integrate social media elements – user generated content platforms and social networking features – directly into their commerce environments.

“By building and maintaining vibrant communities that tap into the passion inherent in the retailer’s core audience, and then spreading that passion to the larger Social Web, retailers will scale their businesses and engender more loyal and engaged customers,” said Steve Semelsberger, senior vice president and general manager of Enterprise for Demand Media. “This is the real definition of social commerce: A more efficient retail environment where customer opinions, relevant content, and product information are freely distributed, to the benefit of both customers and retailers.”

Using the Pluck social media features within WebSphere Commerce 7, customers have complete control over where these social elements appear and how they look and behave. This is the result of Pluck’s flexible architecture and API-based approach as well as its integration with WebSphere sMash, IBM’s development and execution platform for quickly building agile, web-based applications shipped with WebSphere Commerce 7. Developers can easily drop Pluck-powered forums, ratings and reviews, blogs, photo and video galleries, user profiles and other social features into their e-commerce applications.

“Retailers were among the first to truly understand the social aspects of the web, developing powerful word-of-mouth capabilities, and today we believe they have the biggest opportunity to leverage social media for the benefit of their customers,” said Don Boulia, Director, Product Management, WebSphere Software at IBM. “Pluck has tightly integrated the social experience with online shopping and extended it to capitalize on popular social communities such as Facebook, MySpace and blogs. WebSphere Commerce's open approach to social networking integration allows partners such as Pluck to easily create an online social experience encompassing the entire customer lifecycle that lets retailers make dramatic improvements in site traffic, engagement, and conversion rates.”

The Pluck social media platform offers comprehensive social media capabilities and is broadly deployed on more than 440 leading digital destinations. Pluck capabilities are seamlessly integrated via easy-to-install widgets and a robust set of platform-level APIs that allow site owners to tailor social media experiences to the needs of their distinct audiences.