Company News & Press Releases

Help Wanted: Community Managers

By Monica Alleven
from WirelessWeek
May 15, 2008

The world’s online social networking craze has spawned a new job category, and some of people who are managing the online communities are overseeing the wireless ones as well.

The skills required to be a community manager are not that different from those of a teacher. At times, they’re referees, tempering a politically charged discussion. They might act as a counselor, lending a shoulder to cry on when a user needs consoling. Or they’re cheerleaders, encouraging their students as they learn their way around the mobile Internet.

As off-portal and community-oriented applications grow, carriers need some assurances that what’s being shared is appropriate and meets their content guidelines. That’s where community managers come in. They not only get paid to interact and spark discussions, but also make sure discussions stay on topic and don’t get out of hand.

While operators traditionally have been conservative when it comes to adult content or anything that might be considered off-color, any content company looking to do a distribution deal with operators will find it beneficial to endear themselves by offering services like the ability to moderate texts or discussions. “It’s a whole new world for mobile operators,” says Seamus McAteer, senior analyst at M:Metrics. “It’s a growth category overall, but this is something that they don’t have much experience in and have obvious concerns about.”

SKILL SETS

Dada, an Italian company that powers the Dada life, mobile and love brands, employs five community managers in the United States and 25 globally but expects to double those figures this year. Antonella Stellacci, Dada’s New York-based marketing director, says no specific resume requirements are required, Dadaper se. “You learn as you do it, and you must have the right combination of personal features,” she says. “You must be patient, willing to listen to the other users. You must be creative, keep yourself updated on different topics… It’s more of a personality thing.”

Three of Dada’s community managers interviewed for this story each have diverse backgrounds. “Gobigblue” possesses a history in theater and communications. “Eyesbrown,” a 35-year-old man, taps into his law/justice background and call center management experience. “Janethegreat” is a 28-year-old woman and “American Idol” aficionado who regularly updates her blog on the latest from the show. They requested their real names not be used because they’re occasionally involved in contentious situations and didn’t want their identities made public.

What the managers need is knowledge of current events, ranging from hip hop to politics and religion, and the ability to control the temperature in their communities. They also need to be sensitive and adapt to hundreds of personalities. In one instance, Eyesbrown was online and he was the first person a subscriber reached out to after learning of a parent’s death. The subscriber didn’t have access to a PC but was able to connect with Eyesbrown through texting on a cell phone. “You could read the pain in their words,” he says. “You have to be able to let them talk about it.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT

To make sure the content is appropriate, the managers often use the Seventeen magazine test, where if it’s something that wouldn’t be printed in the magazine, it shouldn’t be used in the community. The managers can’t edit entries, but if something is so blatantly obscene or offensive, they can quickly purge it from the site. “We’re not out to censor anyone,” Eyesbrown says.

A key difference for the mobile world that doesn’t exist on the PC is the interaction is tied ultimately to a network-identifiable device – the phone, notes Steven Spencer, CEO of Upoc, a Dada company. If someone is out of bounds and going against pre-determined guidelines, he or she can get blacklisted, he says. The offender could buy another phone to re-enter the community, but that’s a larger barrier to entry than for someone in the PC world who can just invent a new screen name and get back in.

LEARNING EXPERIENCE

For the community managers at Dada, much of their efforts are simply about guiding users through the system and showing them what they can do with their mobile phones. A mother, for example, can post video or photos straight from her child’s latest sporting event, and it’s easier than taking pictures with a digital camera, loading the photos onto a computer and sending them out.

“The mobile phone aspect is very exciting because it allows for instant updating,” says Gobigblue. “We set the example for others and we educate the average user. The technology is useless if the people don’t know how to use it.”

About 30% of Dada’s customer base posts pictures from their mobile phones, Stellacci says. “The mobile phone is something that usually goes well with the immediacy,” she says. “It’s about catching the moment.” Certain groups are more apt to use the mobile phone as part of their networking – mall kiosk workers, teachers, football players, soccer moms.

The community managers differ from traditional customer service representatives in that they’re talking with users in a more informal manner and almost like a “know-it-all” user, says Janethegreat. Customers “feel like they’re really connecting with someone,” rather than sending an e-mail to an anonymous customer service rep.

“Power users” also help. They’re the first to report when there’s an error on a page, and they disperse information to a lot of other people. They’re also quick to jump when a blog veers off topic.

But the job of a community manager can be bittersweet, says Gobigblue. They’re trying to teach users enough to go it on their own and “leave the nest,” so to speak, and when that happens, it’s time to graduate and say goodbye.

BEHIND-THE-SCENES MODERATORS

Mobile social networking sites often offer safety tips and provide a link to report abuses. But some content companies that supply mobile blogging and social networking applications go a step further, using moderators who review material and occasionally reject it for copyright or other reasons. In extreme cases, they’ll detect potentially illegal material before it gets too far into the public domain.

Juice Wireless doesn’t reveal all of its content policies for competitive reasons, but it can filter out key words and uses off-shore human monitors to watch posts. Typically, there are two kinds of offenders, says Nick Desai, founder and chairman of Juice Wireless and inventor of JuiceCaster, an application that allows users to stay connected to their online community via mobile phones. The ones who intentionally try to post inappropriate content are easy to weed out, and they get blocked from coming back. The other ones are people who didn’t realize a photo is copyrighted or a photo is revealing too much. “We let it be pretty freeform,” he says. “You’d be surprised how well-behaved and self-managed they are.”

New Bay Software’s system is set up so that moderators are given three choices: accept content, reject it and tell the user why it’s being rejected, or, if it looks like illegal material, like child pornography, get the authorities involved. The potentially illegal content goes to a locked server that no unauthorized users can access, and, in the United Kingdom, the Internet Watch Foundation and police are brought in. Details about upload time, the phone number and sometimes the GPS coordinates all are given to the authorities. But only about 1% of messages get rejected, and running across potentially illegal content is rare, says Nagappan Arunachalam, chief marketing officer at New Bay Software, which is based in Dublin, Ireland, with offices in Bellevue, Wash.

Sometimes New Bay provides the moderation tool; other times, the carrier wants to control that. Because New Bay works with operators worldwide, it has to maintain guidelines for numerous countries; sometimes a term considered OK in the United States will be deemed offensive in Ireland, for example. If a moderator isn’t sure about a picture, the company takes a series of steps, and ultimately, if it’s still a dicey call, will consult a carrier representative. “It’s an ongoing learning process,” Arunachalam says.

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