Demand Media launches Pluck on Demand tonight - a new service that will add contextually relevant content to publishing websites via an easy to use widget. In other words, if you don’t have enough content, Pluck on Demand will add appropriate stuff to your site for you.
Pluck on Demand is similar to Blogburst, a product launched in 2006 that brought blog content to larger media sites. But it’s also much different than BlogBurst.
Add content and social media to any website — powered by Pluck On Demand
First, content is matched contextually with Pluck on Demand, meaning the service indexes a website’s content in real time and matches it to content from the network. Blogburst matched content based only on metadata about the content, not the content itself. Also, Pluck on Demand pulls content from both blogs as well as more evergreen content on Demand Media and third party sites like eHow and Encyclopedia Britannica.
Second, Pluck on Demand is widget based and much easier to implement than Blogburst. Pluck on Demand users can add widgets that show interesting content in summarized form, a widget to show full articles that are clicked on, a widget for user comments and another widget to show browsing/search results.
Third, revenue flows with the content. Demand places ads from third party networks into the content. The publisher gets 50% of net revenue. The content creator gets 30%, and Demand keeps the remaining 20%.
To see it in action, click here. The “More on this topic” area on the right is powered by Pluck on Demand. This page shows a full article along with user comments.
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So, is this like Adsense but instead of the “ad” you get an entire chunk of website content delivered based on whatever content was previously seen by the engine as the targeting content?
What about the duplication of content?
No one outside of your zip code gives a flying fuck about this.
You understand this, correct?
Zemanta?
Sounds like Zemanta.
That’s because it is a rip-off of Zemanta, except Zemanta is better in that it actually gives value to SEM where as this has zero value.
There is gonna be no search engine traffic. All the related content on pluck on demand is served through their javascript code. So, how can they give any value toward search targeting? It’s impossible .
That’s correct, there is no bennefit to SEM whatsoever.
Good service. I’ll try to integrate into my site. Yes, I’m lazy
as the title says, ‘for lazy publishers’. Looks like the perfect blend of features. beats rss feeds because the reader still stays on your site. nice.
Very similar to proximic’s offering.
Looks nice…and useful too.
Mike
http://www.wannadevelop.com/
Seems cool, I will try this servie.
I cant believe they don’t even provide access to get a sample of articles on their website…. does not say much about their confidence in being able to provide decent content….
All they have to do is have an area where you can enter test “meta data” and see what articles your users would be shown.
I tried to sign up to find out more (to do a test if possible), but cant change the country from “US”. Are they servicing the US only?
One feature they really need to add is the ability for the publisher to moderate what articles show (either before they show, or by having the ability to remove certain articles).
Many service websites also provide a blog now days, but may not want to show a certain article which conflicts with their offering.
very true, the publishers have to retain control over the content on their sites, this is why we at Zemanta have built an UI where we merely recommend and author confirms each piece of additional content. And this is why we even allow you to setup preferred sources for additions…
it’s great to see other services following the concept of helping the authors. After all, the whole USG is happening because of creative authors, that were very much under served until recently…
As the “lazy publisher” mentioned and linked to in your article, I would like to mention a couple quick points.
In terms of delivering relevant content, it works really well and I am pretty impressed with the guys who built this thing.
The reality is people are often searching for information, and are casting a wide net for information. No matter how unlazy I might be providing links to other articles, community discussions, there is somebody somewhere who has even more information.
So why not keep them on my site, and help them in that process? This service does that.
I guess what you are doing with your title is a version of “link baiting”. It works for you, and that’s great. People talk about you all the time.
this is exciting stuff. syndicate automation is everything. nice to see they are doing something outside of promoting there ehow video content on youtub and managing other peoples domain names. R.R. wants to find another myspace but cant. i would like to see them assemble a serious strategic multichannel domain name platform for themselves. they claim some sort of domain genius when there url portfolio has more holes than a al-quida hideout. when it comes to domaining they are still lazy and lack any game changing substance.
ContentLocator.com
@Jono … Zemanta does exactly what you describe - writer/editor approved inclusion, and provides SEM benefits.
@Paul (Ben) … I wouldn’t go that far as to call it a rip-off, but it is nice to see this kind of validation and knowing you are at the head of innovation.
bye
Andraz Tori, Zemanta
@Andraz Tori I’m not from Zemanta but I agree that they’re ahead as far as innovation goes. I don’t see the point in Pluck’s service as it states it’s supposed to provide content monetization and value, but does it? I would have to disagree, but then, my idea of adding value to a site is not to plaster it full of content that has no SEM return. I guess they’re going with the ‘turning one time visitors in loyal visitors’, again, i’m sticking with Zemanta which ticks all the boxes.
Regarding the US-only comment, the UK division of Pluck London has only just setup shop and they’re hiring right now. However, word for the wise… as far as synergy goes between them and Texas HQ, there isn’t any. Chances are they only know Pluck on Demand has even launched because they read it here
Zemanta looks nice, but a few things which would stop me using it are:
1) From my tests, the keywords it choose were completely off, and the resulting links not related to our industry/region. Perhaps users should be able to choose the region, and even select their own keywords (This seems to be what pluck have done. along with categories also).
2) The links all take the readers off site. We would want them to have the impression that we created it and/or get additional page views.
The other features mentioned do sound great though.
Nice concept, but Helium does it much better. Both thru a related articles widget, with ad rev share, as well as with other widgets that showcase quality user-generated articles written by that site’s audience.
Sounds similar to Zemanta .
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
Visit mydesert.com which is the on-line version of ‘The Desert Sun’ newespaper. It uses PLUCK as a content server. Worst rendering pages I have ever seen. Slow. Assume the PLUCK proxy server or the DLL used to communicate to it is single-threaded or has some other bottleneck. Everyone remarks on how slow this website is.
USAToday also uses Pluck for user-generated content. One of the fastest sites you’ll ever see with its volume of content and an incredible number of page views. Apparently Pluck is not the bottleneck for mydesert.
Hi everyone,
My name is Serena and I’m one of the Product Managers working on Pluck On Demand. We’re excited to be live and appreciate your feedback! I wanted to clear up a few questions we’ve seen through the comments.
1. Publisher websites will have great control over the content displayed on their websites. Content will only be displayed in the category(ies) the publisher selects. Publishers can also block specific articles using an in-line blocking tool. Step by step instructions on blocking content are in our FAQs. http://ondemand.pluck.com/faq.aspx#remove-pod
2. Duplicate content will not be an issue for the search engines with Pluck On Demand. All content is served via JavaScript, and thereby not crawlable or indexable by search engines. We are working towards an SEO friendly version of the product, while being careful not to create duplicate content issues.
3. Pluck On Demand keeps users on your site by allowing them to view all articles and videos from within your website. The widgets inherit the look and feel of your site via CSS keeping the user experience consistent.
4. We are limited to U.S. only publishers at this time. Likewise, our content is currently only available in English. Please contact us if you are an international site or content provider and we will reach out as we plan to roll out the product internationally. http://ondemand.pluck.com/contact-us.aspx
5. Pluck On Demand widgets optionally come with commenting and recommending tools. This allows users to interact with your site and brings community from across the Pluck On Demand network. Smaller sites can get an instant community by enabling interaction from across all Pluck On Demand powered sites.
Please let us know if you have any additional questions we can help with. You can see the full website here: http://ondemand.pluck.com
Thanks!
Serena Burton
Pluck On Demand team
Maybe the content needs updating.
I Just tried the “Sample Content” search and got:-
“Sorry, we could not find related content for: iPhone Applications”
Is this just a beta problem?
Interesting. I get content for “iPhone” and for “Applications” but not for both. A couple other phrases (e.g. “cold weather”) had the same result. Broken?
Interesting play - how will Ning respond?
Seems like this is a departure from the focus on the top brands, where we excel.
Nice presentation at web2summit Rich.
You can check it out in action on AllGetaways.com (AKA Travels.com). It has been working well for us so far.
What camp did you go to?!