OpenWeb Launches Forums Tool, Letting Publishers Build On-Site Communities

OpenWeb launched Forums on September 30, 2026, a product that lets publishers build Reddit-style discussion pages on their own websites, the company told Axios. Beta users who engaged with Forums spent three times as long on publishers' sites and were twice as likely to register, according to OpenWeb. Senior vice president of partner success Steven Goldberg said overall engagement among those users rose roughly 21%. The closed beta included six publishing partners, among them FootballCo and 9to5Mac. OpenWeb plans a broader rollout across the thousands of domains using its community products. Forum pages create new advertising inventory that OpenWeb can monetize or publishers can sell directly. Forums is part of Community Core, combining OpenWeb's commenting, forums and moderation technology. The New York-based company has raised $393 million across six rounds since 2016, including a $170 million Series F led by Georgian in 2022 that valued it at $1.5 billion.