This year’s theme for the Nascar Sprint Cup series, broadcast on ESPN, was ‘Feel Your Heart Race’. Fans of the sport are extremely loyal and show an enormous amount of support for their Sprint Cup drivers, so ESPN wanted to give them the ability to get more involved. Working with creative agency, Wieden + Kennedy New York, ESPN developed the ‘virtual pit wall’ – an online space where fans could leave messages of support for their drivers for the final seven-week leg of the Sprint Cup.

Wieden + Kennedy New York ran rich media banners from ESPN and NASCAR’s sites, where fans could write their messages and submit them to the pitwall, or they could access and write on the wall directly.

The spirit and brand reputation of NASCAR meant that it was extremely important that the messages were moderated  to ensure they were not offensive, illegal or abusive. eModeration put a team of moderators on the job throughout the seven weeks (working 24 hours a day to cover the heaviest response period). Each message was checked by a moderator, and once approved, the fans were notified that their message of support had been posted. It was vital that this happened quickly and efficiently, to make sure fans stayed engaged with the event.

Matt Mauriello, Wieden + Kennedy, says: “The level of support from fans went way beyond anything we’d expected. It’s a credit to the NASCAR community and the support they show for all their drivers. The volume of messages meant that it was extremely important that each message was moderated properly and quickly, and eModeration did a superb job, working 24-hours a day at the start of the campaign."

If you’re an English football fan, there aren’t many better games than the FA Cup Final. In 2009, football fans were able to watch the real time buzz around the FA Cup final thanks to a unique experiment by ITV.com, pulling together the latest social media apps and some rapid-fire moderation.

Twitterfall pulled in live Tweets about the game, and a tool developed by London company thruSITES allowed fans to see which of the players generated the most buzz. Fans were also able to submit their thoughts using web based audio comment service AudioBoo. Finally, eModeration were there to make sure that the only ’fouls’ which took place were those on the pitch.  We moderated the text and audio feed  ‘real time’, trying to ensure that valid Tweets went live onto the site within 30 seconds of them being posted.

At its peak, when goals were scored, a Tweet a second was coming onto the tool, and our moderators were clearing them so that they appeared every 2 – 3 seconds on the front end.  The buzz was enormous, and everyone involved was really enjoying such an adrenaline-filled experiment.  “We were VERY quick!  It felt like fan commentary at times” said one of the team. 

Dominic Cameron, MD of ITV.com, said: “Our experiments with social media show that fans of our shows, especially the big live events, love to share their thoughts with others on the web in real time. Social media can really transform the way we all enjoy those memorable moments on ITV. This experiment is a great way of reflecting the buzz about the game on our site.” 

eModeration looks after three main sections of ITV’s social networking sites: ITV Football , a community site for fans; the lively, female-focussed ITV Loose Women Forums and ITV.com , which hosts the remainder of its programme forums.  The forums are divided into News, Sports and TV shows - including the flagship soap Coronation Street, exciting dramas such as Primeval, and popular sports like the extremely busy Formula 1 forum.  Periodically, we also moderate programme pages on Facebook and Bebo, most recently Britannia High, or game/reality shows such as X Factor, I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here or The Colour Of Money.

The Colour of Money, hosted by Chris Tarrant, has been extended effortlessly onto the digital medium: players can experience the game for themselves, and whilst the weekly winners don’t actually receive any money, they do get to upload a short video of themselves doing their own version of a victory dance ... We screen profiles for illegal, offensive or copyrighted content, averaging about 800 items a day over the weekends as the show airs on television.

Soon after the creation of Times Online, the volume of comments being posted began to outstrip our client’s ability to handle them in-house, so outside moderators were appointed until the service could again be bought in-house. Since the launch of their new website in February 2007, the number of reader responses soared: on average our moderators were processing around 3,000 comments a day, and in 2008 we dealt with just over one million comments.

Our job was to reject for publication anything which was libellous, defamatory, racist, abusive, obscene or couched in intemperate language. A good feedback loop with Times Online helped us hone our instincts and ensured that we were attuned to what should and should not be allowed through. The team (closely managed by a UK-based team leader) worked around the clock every day of the year, reacting to peaks in demand by putting extra resources onto the project at very short notice.

Staffed by an international group of highly-skilled professional moderators located in Europe, North and South America and Australia, eModeration covers all time-zones and brings an educated, multi-cultural focus to our work with news media clients.  When controversy breaks out, we make sure our moderators understand the context so that they are in a position to judge the comments.

“Ultimately, eModeration gave us confidence and removed the burden and worry associated with moderation. The company fully understood our needs and dealt with them in a very efficient and professional manner.”    Times Online