Sky to Launch Pluck Social Media Tools Across Online Network

British Sky Broadcasting (Sky) is working with Pluck - the industry-leading provider of social media capabilities to publishers, brands and retailers - to embed an array of innovative social media tools across its range of digital media properties. The new functionality, which will roll out across the portal this autumn, will be positioned under the new Sky Community platform.

Incorporating the likes of skynews.com, sky.com and sky.com/showbiz, the Sky Portal currently ranks as the 6th most popular commercial website network in the UK (ComScore). The incorporation of new social networking functionality - including cross-site user profiling - will help support greater audience engagement and provide improved levels of integration across the portal.

The first Sky website to launch with the new social media capabilities will be the award-winning Sky News site ( http://www.skynews.com/). Sky News has launched a variety of social media features across the site, including blogs, discussion boards and user comments, designed to give people more of a voice in shaping and contributing to the news agenda. The Sky News site will also host a user-generated 'citizen journalism' section in which people can share videos, photos and comments on breaking news events. By the autumn a range of other Sky properties - including Sky.com, Sky