• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, September 3, 2008

Social media services company Pluck today is expected to announce a broad-reaching partnership with the Sun-Times News Group to provide its readers with discussion forums, blogs, and community tools across its portfolio of digital properties, including SunTimes.com, PioneerLocal.com, SuburbanChicagoNews.com, SouthtownStar.com, and Post-Trib.com.

Some of the first Pluck features the news organization deployed on its Web site include comments on articles, reader recommendations and contextually related blog posts from the BlogBurst syndication network.

"By adding new capabilities to our site, such as reader comments, photos and blogs, we are significantly expanding interactivity with our readers," said Catherine Lanucha, director of content for the Sun-Times News Group.

Pluck positions itself both as a provider of white-label social networking tools for enterprise clients like USA Today and now the Sun-Times, while also running BlogBurst, a vast blog syndication network which connects newspapers and other media sites to a network of some 5,500 selected blogs.

"We're providing publishers with the tools to bring online conversations into their own networks, where they can best monetize it," said Dave Panos, CEO of Pluck and EVP of Demand Media, which acquired Pluck earlier this year.

Pluck SiteLife service helps online properties engage site visitors with a range of social media capabilities including user comments, ratings, recommendations, reviews, photo and video sharing, forums and social networking profiles called Personas. SiteLife includes widgets and a set of platform-level APIs for publishers to tailor a social media experience to their audiences.

Pluck's social media services are presently live on some 300 top brand, media and retail sites, including those of Circuit City, Condé Nast, The Guardian and USA Today, serving more than 2.5 billion interactions each month.

According to Panos, publishers are becoming better at creating and monetizing content environments that are almost entirely user-generated. "By engaging consumers with open platforms, publishers get the added bonus of consumers creating much of the content," Panos said.

Focused on the greater Chicago area, the Sun-Times News Group includes the Chicago Sun-Times and SunTimes.com, as well as newspapers and websites serving more than 200 communities across Chicago.

In March, new media holding company Demand Media acquired Pluck for a reported $75 million in cash. Previously, Pluck raised $10 million in two rounds of funding in late 2004.

Demand Media, which was founded by former MySpace CEO Richard Rosenblatt, has been busy buying up content sites and other new media companies. It secured $100 million in financing last September, bringing its total investment to $320 million.