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Rate my startup: Socialmod - take the pain out of UGC moderation (socialmod.com)
31 points by maccman on May 27, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 15 comments



Clear business model, great website design.

While I don't have a problem getting the idea at first sight, I believe an introduction video/animation would help a lot.

The plans are a bit pricey to me -- (how) did you do your pricing analysis/survey?


Even After the tour, I couldn't get much of an idea on what it does.



So is it a moderation engine?

Too bad that there are HNers who down vote a comment that says a problem some one has. I said that the tour didn't help me because it really didn't. And I hope there should be other people who would have the same problem. The developer gets a chance to decide whether he needs to improve things.

Really proud of OH-SO-Intelligent portion of HN users who understand things at a glance. Sorry I'm not. So down vote if you wish.


Looks great-- as I mentioned in another comment, I'm definitely considering how we might use this. We have a number of sites with user-generated content and not enough hours in the day to review it all.

Regarding your semi-automated plans:

* What's the process for evaluating false positives/negatives?

* What guarantee do you provide against incorrect results? I know you have each item moderated 3 times, but it's still a worry. What if porn gets by?

* I assume your team will be able to handle really terrible objectionable content uploaded by griefers? The kind of stuff no human should have to see?

* I feel you should mention MTurk usage on your site somewhere. "How" you perform the automated pieces was one of the biggest questions I had, and I would not have purchased without emailing you to find out if you outsourced externally, used Amazon, or what-have-you.

* What's the turnaround time like for the moderation? Any estimates on that depending on the content?

Thanks in advance.


* We have two rounds, each round is voted on by three people, if there's disagreement on the verdict in the first round, it goes to the second round. If the second round disagrees - the items is failed as a precaution.

* We only provide a money back guarantee. We don't charge enough to cover any insurance. If you need that we've partnered with moderation companies who offer insurance (cover obviously depends on the amount of moderation you need).

* Yes, the Turkers are all warned.

* I think you're right. Initially I thought it it would be a turn off - but in retrospect that was a mistake.

* Very quick, it's about 7 seconds per item (once it's on mturk). Items are batched up into 20 and sent off every minute - so the complete turnaround will be a bit longer.

Let me know if you've any more queries.


Looks great. Could you elaborate on how your "automated" plans work? Who does the moderation - are you using Mechanical Turk, outsourced employees, something else?

I'd also like to see a "developer" plan, for sites that haven't launched.


Yes, we're using Mechanical Turk - we compare answers at least three times per moderated item.

I agree with you about the developer plan - what sort of attributes would you propose (pricing, usage etc)?


nice site, dunno if there is a market for that tough..

you should give example of client using your site also add an about us & blog page


Scalable/easy moderation is one of the [several] major problems preventing UGC from growing into a serious advertising medium. Moderation is a big part of the value we add over other technology providers.

So I would say the market is definitely there, but that the pricing model should better reflect the amount of time required to moderate images vs videos of various lengths.


There is a market-- I'm not sure how large. But I immediately started crunching the numbers to see how much value this would offer our team. We're still considering it.


Great looking website. Its very clear what you're offering, and it sounds like a great service for rich media moderation.

One suggestion: On the pricing page the default tab is for self-moderation. Personally, I find the outsourced moderation offer much more compelling, and I would lead with that.


I've created a free evaluation version here: http://account.socialmod.com/signup?plan_name=free


Site looks pretty good, however: "Our team are on call to moderation your content 24/7."

Should be: "Our team is on call to moderate your content 24/7."


Thanks, fixed




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