USA Today's community-centric makeover last month appears to be paying off as the site has seen a dramatic 380 percent increase in registrations since the re-launch, while its unique visitor rates have grown 21 percent from February, according to Nielsen//NetRatings (via MediaPost).

Last month, USA Today relaunched its website with video, blogs, dynamic content-sharing and recommendation tools. Expanded user-profile and social network capabilities and public comment tools led to nearly 40,000 user comments in March.

Sections seeing particularly strong traffic gains include Sports, Money, Travel and Tech, according to Gannett's internal measurements.

To achieve the site's new look and feel, USA Today enlisted the proprietary social media services of Pluck Corp. Pluck SiteLife, for example, makes possible reader blogs, photo sharing, content ratings, reader comments, and forums, while Pluck BlogBurst is a blog syndication network with some 3,400 blogs serving up content to major news outlets, magazines and broadcast networks worldwide.