Month: January 2015

OPW INTERVIEW – Jan 13 – Webpurify is an Internet dating industry preferred provider for moderation.  It works, scales, and will increment your conversion factors if you use their faster service options. They're a client of Courtland Brooks. We like what they do and recommend using them. They're rock solid, and have been around 7 years.  Here's my interview with the CEO of Webpurify, Jonathan Freger.

How does Webpurify help Internet dating sites? 
Quick and effective moderation is essential for enhancing user experience and protecting brands. WebPurify works with many sites in the dating space to not only moderate their image, text, and video content for offensive material but also to sort images so that they display in the appropriate areas of a site.

For example,depending on a site's needs, images with one human face may be sorted for "Profile Photos Only", whereas a picture of just a landscape will likely be sorted to show somewhere else on a user's profile. Again, each site's audience and functionality is different so we work closely with them to develop the most comprehensive and effective moderation plan for their users, and to help improve their conversion factors and improve the user experience.

How are you different? 
For starters, we don't crowd source this important work. Crowd sourcing is a dangerous solution for user's private info.  Our teams are specially trained for each unique project. Having been in the moderation business for more than 7 years, we take a very hands on consultative approach with our clients so we can address all of their moderation needs.

Why is crowdsourcing bad?
Many of our clients have come to us after a poor experience with a crowd sourcing solution. You are essentially trusting an anonymous, untrained and unaccountable work force with a critical piece of your site's success, not to mention the privacy issues.

What are the most common concerns from iDating CEOs these days with respect to content moderation? 
Turn around time is extremely important. User experience is essential in this space, which is why we moderate most content in 5 minutes or less. This keeps users engaged and coming back. Accuracy is of course extremely important as well. We pride ourselves on an impeccable track record.

What kind of services should the industry look for, and what kind should they steer clear of? 
Automated solutions for image and video moderation simply don't work. Categories like "drug use" or "violence" just can't be caught this way. Also, crowd sourcing solutions can be dangerous since you are typically using an anonymous, untrained, and unaccountable work force to handle an essential part of your business.

Our clients are typically looking for a solid partner to take this burden off of their hands. WebPurify moderates roughly 500,000 images daily so we are more than prepared to take on projects of all types and sizes.

How do you improve accuracy? 
Accuracy is essential to the success of our client's sites. We typically require 2 to 3 weeks for training and set up for any new custom moderation project. During training and when projects are live, our managers run daily tests by inserting sample photos into the stream. Results are gathered and discussed with each moderator. These results are also shared weekly at the team meetings.

How familiar are they with iDating? 
We work with many clients in the iDating space. We have found that each site has it's own unique challenges and we work with these clients to develop the most effective and comprehensive moderation program for their specific needs. Although each site is different, we have found that they all share the need for rapid moderation of all of their user generated content in order to retain their users and keep them engaged. Our automated profanity filter scans text in milliseconds and our live teams can return image moderations within 5 minutes or less.

Post by Mark Brooks @