I already knew about SAXOTECH’s content management system and Pluck’s social networking platform teaming up in the online news world. The partnership is a big part of Gannett’s GO4 design for its papers’ Web sites. But I missed this story last Friday.

The SAXOTECH-Pluck partnership is a big part of the crowdsourcing strategy Gannett implemented in its newsroom-turned-Information Center overhaul two years ago. Looks like the companies are trying to strengthen their hands.

SAXOTECH runs our CMS now. It’s the only CMS I’ve ever used beside College Publisher, but I assume it’s like most: restrictive. SIteLife’s Pluck is used at The Economist, FOX News, Gannett, Scotts, The Washington Post and us. It’s only crashed on us a couple of times, and it allows users to keep track of stories, blogs, photos and submit their own. But it does have its drawbacks.

The biggest for me is that you can’t search for other users - or anything really. You can friend someone if you run into his post or comment, but you can’t search an entire directory of users on the site.

With blogs, our resident editorial cartoonist Marshall Ramsey is quite vocal about his hatred for Pluck. He says it “doesn’t look like a blog,” and he isn’t satisfied with its functionality. His blog is pretty popular on the site, and his following bemoaned its switch to Pluck.

However the SAXOTECH-Pluck combo is getting people involved with our site. If it’s working I can’t complain.