Moderation of Social Networks? MySpace’s Approach

While reading the facinating story of Orkut’s problems in Brazil, the following tidbit struck me:

“Addressing such problems can prove expensive. News Corp’s MySpace faced similar complaints (Porn and racist images on pages next to ads) in recent years. Now company executives say, each of the eight million photos uploaded to its site each day is reviewed at least once by a human being. That program costs MySpace several million dollars a year.”

Besides the cost of that contract, what really interested me was that MySpace executives are not the laissez faire group that many people believe they are…. That is a huge commitment in terms of manpower and costs. For MySpace, maybe it’s a small drop in the bucket to make sure that advertisers are kept happy and keep paying to place ads on the site.

Is it worth it to moderate the user generated content placed on your site? Looks like MySpace believes it is. After all, if it keeps the Attorneys General away from your site, that’s a good thing. And if it costs some money to make more money, that’s good too.

Back to the blog