Businesses for moderation comments

The company ICUC Moderation, an entrepreneur based out of Winnipeg, Keith Bilous (Keith Bilous), provides services to its customers moderating sites.

Since thirty years ago the network was published the first to comment, discussion and debates with the participation of many anonymous users become for many almost a raison d'être of the Internet.

Western sites like Gawker and Huffington Post have built their empires on the multiple comments, and passionate debate. But what's good for Gawker, is not always so, it is useful for sites known companies. Since the well-known brands were represented on the Internet, and companies have to communicate directly with their customers, not in all cases, the longed-for "a direct relationship with consumers' enthusiasm is a PR-services.

Explosive mixture of anonymity, their own opinions and feelings of security because of the remote location of the commentator leads to the fact that forums just out of control. And, therefore, increases the need for moderators who monitor comments and remove those that are outside the scope. That this is a proposal ICUC Moderation. The company employs more than 200 moderators around the world. In June, the company became part of London's Aegis Group, although he Bilous, like most of his staff continued to work at home.

According to official data revenues last year totaled $ 10 million. So much can be earned by filtering out comments on websites, on Twitter and in the pages of Facebook, on the world-famous brands Chevron (American Energy Company), Starbucks (coffee house chain), and The Boston Globe (the largest newspaper in Boston). "This work can be so disgusting that sometimes on Fridays, I feel the urgent need to spend two hours in the soul," - says Bilous.

"We see everything about the world", - said Tamara Littleton (Tamara Littleton) - executive director of London-based eModeration, which has a staff of 160 people, and profit of not less than $ 7 million. Its clients include eModeration MTV, The Economist (influential British edition) and ESPN (sports cable television channel). Since its inception in 2002, the company has doubled in size. Cost of services for moderating client sites range from $ 4,000 to $ 50,000 per month.

"Previously, companies only want people to not write bad things about their brand - says Littleton, - And now they want to manage user pages on Facebook and Twitter accounts to." Social networks eliminate the factor of anonymity in the comments, which resulted in him is much increased workload of employees. After all, consumers expect an immediate response to their messages addressed to representatives of brands. For example, last year the PR-service company Nestle tried unsuccessfully to cope with the accusatory comments from representatives of Greenpeace on his page on Facebook, anyone who is not professionally moderated. In such cases, the team eModeration can extinguish the scandal before it picks up the pace.

While training on conflict prevention and a flair for "dangerous" discussions are an integral part of the work, moderating comments requires extraordinary composure and tranquility. "It's an art, not science" - said Mrs. Fake (Caterina Fake) - co-founder of Flickr (service for storing pictures and videos) and a former moderator of numerous communities. Moderators - it is mostly the educated middle-aged people. Most of them work remotely with a flexible schedule.

According to Peter Friedman (Peter Friedman), who takes a job with the moderators comments since he founded in 1984, an internal social network of Apple, «most often are women older than 35 years, working at home and are often involved in moderating a part-time work" . Now Friedman is the executive director of LiveWorld - an online company which is valued at $ 8 million and employs 200 to 400 active moderators who work around the clock for clients such as Pfizer (pharmaceutical company) and Bank of America.

Moderators can receive from $ 40,000 to $ 80,000 per year. However, their work is fraught with great challenges. Because every day they are faced with racism, bigotry and extremism, as well as other defects and diseases of society, including pedophilia. Sometimes it comes even to the personal threats against the moderators. Gaining new staff Tamara Littlvan adjusts them to the worst: "You need to have common sense and be truly impenetrable." She knows whereof he speaks: one disgruntled commentators have published on the website of its own home address and phone number. Although the number of the most disgusting comments is less than 10% of the total published on the site, but it was with them and have to deal moderators.

Many companies, including the publication of The New York Times, is still engaged in their own sites. However, payment of the full-time moderators in most cases too high. And there is always a risk of losing control of the company commented on its website, as happened with the site npr.org, whose owners last year, yet sought the services of ICUC.

According to analysts Altmeter Group Ouyang Jeremy (Jeremiah Owyang), the demand for outsourcing services companies by moderating the content will continue to grow. But, as expected, this growth will come at the expense of participants from developing countries (eg India or the Philippines), which will offer its services to companies directly, and at a lower than its competitors, the price.