@DNA2008: Sky News to embed SkyCast video sharing tool

Posted by Martin Stabe on 4 March 2008 at 09:21
Tags: Sky, Sky News, Sky.com, User-Generated Content, skynews, video

Sky News plans to embed a white-label version of Sky’s video sharing tool, SkyCast, into news pages on to encourage user submissions of video.

Sky News associate editor Simon Bucks noted the move in a panel on user-submitted content at the DNA conference in Brussels today.

Sky News already has a still photo sharing section on its web site called YourPhoto.

@Beyond the Printed Word: MySun moderators tested on 152-page policy

Posted by Martin Stabe on 8 November 2007 at 14:12
Tags: News of the World, Sun, Sun Online, The Sun, The Sun Online, User-Generated Content, thelondonpaper

Danny Dagan, head of online communities at News Group Digital which runs MySun and provides moderation for the News of the World and thelondonpaper.

The Sun and its sister titles take a very strict line on moderating content submitted to their sites, its approach is that contributing under the tabloids’ brands is very different than blogging on Blogger, he says. It demands higher standards:

• News Group has a 152-page moderation policy for what it terms “reader generated content” on MySun community and article comments. Moderators are tested on the policy each quarter, and the results affect their bonus.
• There are seven moderators and a manager at News Group Digital. The skills needed to recruit them depends on how much editorial input they have to have - and these are not necessarily journalists. But at the Sun, the ability to pun is very imporant.
• Qualifications for night moderators are somewhat different from day moderators, Dagan jokes. They tend to like sitting alone in front of a computer at night and may speak fluent Klingon.
• The Sun has a strong ethos - it’s very British, and want to be very fun. This isn’t the same as having a blogging tool or a blog on blogger. BLogging on a tabloid means you’re making a statement.
• Justifying the cost of moderation teams is easy when you compare it to the spending on editorial production, and compare the number of page impressions and user loyalty that user generated content.
• A key piece of registration data the Sun gets a high degree of voluntary disclosure on is “What is my favourite football team”. The default is “I don’t follow football”, which provokes and indignat response from users &mdash 60 per cent of registered user tell the SUn their favourite football team.
• Between two and 200 comments are removed each day, depending on the topics being discussed.
• Volunteer moderation is problematic, because there have been employment tribunal cases of moderators seeking retrospective payment.
• Dagan declines to answer the most interesting question at the close of the session: the proportion of Sun Online users who register and use Sun Online.

How Five Live is putting user-generated content to use

Posted by Patrick Smith on 28 June 2007 at 10:03
Tags: BBC, BBC Five Live, User-Generated Content