Wetpaint promises to make every website social-happy

It is one thing to say, "Let's make our website social and really get on board with this web 2.0 thing." However, sometimes talk seems much simpler than execution. For those who are looking for a quick and effective way to take their websites social, social publishing leader Wetpaint is willing to help you out…if you're willing to scratch its back when the time comes.

Marketwire just released two pieces of rather interesting information regarding Wetpaint. First, Wetpaint has just received an impressive $25 million in funding from two co-investors, in addition to the funding of the current flock of Wetpaint investors, to move forward with its next stage of development and distribution. The second part of the equation (which ties into this latest push for distribution) is that Wetpaint is debuting "Wetpaint Injected," which allows any website to incorporate the social elements of Wetpaint's platform without starting a Wetpaint-based site from scratch.

Wetpaint is already experiencing a successful adoption rate; websites like IGN, Flixster and NuWire Investor have already begun "injecting" themselves with the Wetpaint's social serum. Going social can only be a good thing for Flixster and NuWire Investor, as Wetpaint Injected will give users a venue for discussion, recommendations, and debate. IGN already had a fairly large reader-commenter base, but Wetpaint Injected will allow users to create and contribute content in a more fluid manner than the old non-integrated forum, and with more functionality than a simple comment system.

In short, this is how Wetpaint claims Wetpaint Injected can help both small websites and the big players in the industry:

1. Utilizing Wetpaint Injected will allow users to create content in a community built directly into each and every website.

2. That content will be aggregated by search engines as the direct product of whatever website the content is originated from.

3. As the content gets aggregated, SEO will build, increasing the rank of the page on sites like Google (are there any others, really?), which will increase traffic, thereby increasing ad revenue in turn.

Press releases being what they are, the whole setup looks lovely. Of course, nothing is free, and at some point, Wetpaint is going to want a kickback for its product. What that looks like is that whenever a website using Wetpaint Injected surpasses 100,000 impressions a month, Wetpaint will negotiate a fee based on either a CPM or revenue-sharing basis.

Even with the kickback, if Wetpaint Injected is as feature-rich and appealing as it seems to be, a lot of websites would do well to move out of the dark ages and into the modern internet community by going social on Wetpaint's platform. But then, if every website is social, like Wetpaint intends, will social websites really be unique? The answer remains to be seen.