OpenWeb is launching Forums, a new product aimed at helping publishers build Reddit-like discussion spaces on their own websites.
The idea is to give news and media sites dedicated places for conversation that stay on-platform rather than spilling out to social networks and other third-party communities. As Axios reports, articles can automatically become topics inside a forum, with existing comments folded into the new discussion page. Readers can also start their own threads.
How Forums works
OpenWeb says the product relies on automated detection for moderation, backed by human and community moderation layers. The company also says forum pages can create new ad inventory, which OpenWeb can monetize itself or publishers can include in their own ad sales efforts.
That pitch lands at a moment when publishers are looking for more direct reasons to bring readers back to their own properties, especially as search traffic becomes less dependable. Forums is also meant to encourage more reader registration, helping publishers build direct audience relationships.
Early beta results
According to Axios, OpenWeb says users who engaged with Forums during beta testing spent three times as long on publishers’ sites and were twice as likely to register. Senior vice president of partner success Steven Goldberg also told Axios that those users showed roughly a 21% increase in overall engagement.
The closed beta initially included six publishing partners, including FootballCo and 9to5Mac, per Axios. Bradley Chambers, operations manager at 9to5Mac, told Axios that much of the moderation work is automated, leaving him spending about 30 minutes a week moderating comments and forums across several active sites.
Part of a broader community push
Forums sits inside a broader OpenWeb offering called Community Core, which combines the company’s commenting, forums and moderation technology. OpenWeb plans to roll the product out more broadly across the thousands of domains that already use its community tools.
OpenWeb began as a commenting platform and has since expanded into a wider set of community and advertising products. Forums is the latest sign that publishers and their vendors see owned discussion spaces not just as engagement features, but as potential drivers of registrations, time spent and new ad inventory.
