Coral by Vox Media relaunches, ready to build better communities for publishers around the world

The Coral Project -- the group acquired in January by Vox Media, dedicated to building safer and more productive engagement for publishers -- is today unveiling a new name and a completely revamped commenting tool. The product will now go by ‘Coral by Vox Media,’ and its popular commenting platform Talk will simply now be called ‘Coral’.

The newly updated platform is used by more than 60 brands in 13 countries including recent and forthcoming partners The Financial Times, Mother Jones, and the Los Angeles Times.

This marks the first major announcement from the company since being acquired by Vox Media in January, bringing together both companies’ missions of building strong and deeply engaged audiences for publishers.

The new version of Coral is a complete rewrite of the platform, based on feedback the team learned from dozens of community managers and tens of millions of comments over the past four years. The result is a faster and more powerful product with vastly improved user experiences for both commenters and moderators. There are new features and pricing aimed at large companies and small newsrooms alike.

Coral now includes more features than ever, aiming to prevent abusive trolls from disrupting conversations and gives journalists the tools and resources needed to facilitate safer and more engaging conversations, encouraging more productive and respectful discussions.

Since its founding in 2014, Coral has remained focused on improving online conversation without sacrificing the privacy of commenters. Unlike many other platforms, publishers who use Coral remain the sole owners of their audience data. The platform itself remains ad-free, and user data is never shared or sold without permission.

Coral’s open source platform connects to publishers’ existing login systems, and exceeds required GDPR standards. In 2018, its work was recognized by the European Union as the only commenting platform to uphold the objectives of the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation.

Coral is multi-lingual and available to any company looking to build safe engagement online while owning their audience data. It also integrates into Vox Media’s all in-one publishing, audience and revenue platform available to media companies, Chorus.

Uniquely, Coral offers more than just technology.

“We believe community engagement is first and foremost a question of strategy before technology,” said Andrew Losowsky, Head of Coral. “As well as our world-class platform, we offer strategic consulting, newsroom training, and online resources that help publishers find the best ways to engage their audience and build loyalty without relying on Facebook and Twitter.”

If you’d like to improve your onsite community and learn more about Coral, contact Andrew Losowsky, Head of Coral, at andrew.losowsky@voxmedia.com or visit coral.voxmedia.com