Rare bedfellows spell real opportunity
The IT channel may learn from a proposed sex industry and feminist partnership, suggests Chris Gonsalves
We spend a lot of time talking to solution providers about unconventional partnership opportunities as a way to expand practice areas, build portfolios and capture new revenue. So when what may be the oddest proposed partnership in the history of information technology crossed our desks, it was impossible to ignore.
Also, it's darkly amusing.
First, the completely unfunny part. Gawker Media's Jezebel.com, a site with a decidedly feminist point of view, has for several months been dealing with internet trolls polluting the comments section on their articles with some of the filthiest, most violent pornographic animated gifs ever devised.
These are images that would be unwelcome on actual porn sites. On a site dedicated to women's issues and female empowerment, they're horrifying.
Gawker, which also runs sites like Deadspin, Jalopnik, Gizmodo and Lifehacker, should know a thing or two about managing large, busy web comments sections. But, for whatever reason, the company was slow to even acknowledge the problem at Jezebel.com.
That forced the writers and editors at Jezebel to turn the porno-trolling into a fairly public spectacle to get some relief from the offensive images.
Three days ago, a post attributed to the Jezebel staff called the situation "profoundly upsetting to our commenters who have the misfortune of starting their day with some excessively violent images, to casual readers who drop by to skim Jezebel with their morning coffee only to see hard-core pornography at the bottom of a post about Michelle Obama, and especially to the staff, who are the only ones capable of removing the comments and are thus, by default, now required to view and interact with violent pornography and gore as part of our jobs".
"None of us are paid enough to deal with this on a daily basis," the post read. "This has been going on for months, and it's affecting our ability to do our jobs. In refusing to address the problem, Gawker's leadership is prioritising theoretical anonymous tipsters over a very real and immediate threat to the mental health of Jezebel's staff and readers."
While Gawker dawdled around the problem, the unlikeliest of white knights arrived with the offer of an IT partnership.
The good folks at Jasmin.com, the self-professed global leader in adult webcam services, offered Gawker VP of editorial Joel Johnson the assistance of its IT staff to help eliminate the rogue porn on Jezebel.com.
A memo, signed by Jasmin.com VP Jerry Jardene, offered to help protect the Jezebel website, and give the necessary boost in resources to prevent similar occurrences in the future.
"On behalf of our company, which consistently services multiple digital devices and operating systems, would like to offer up the services of our IT team - free of charge - to work alongside your staff to eliminate the offensive content being posted on your site," Jardene wrote.
"As a company that values its female employees, we were outraged to learn that Jezebel's reporters have been the subject of such malicious harassment. Jasmin.com feels compelled to lend a hand.
"Our site is the largest in our industry, and receives over 60 million unique visitors a month, which requires a crack team to keep our immense infrastructure up-and-running, while also maintaining a carefully moderated environment for each of the models that work on our site on a daily basis."
I wouldn't be surprised if Jasmin.com's very existence causes rage-induced hyperventilating in the Jezebel offices. But the proposed IT partnership seems unlikely to come to fruition, since Gawker officials in the past 24 hours have taken steps to quell the staff unrest if not the actual porn spam itself.
According to a follow-up post by Jezebel editor-in-chief Jessica Coen, plans have been made to temporarily disable images in the site's comment section and tighten the screws on comments such that only pre-approved commenters will be able to see their remarks immediately. All others will be shunted to a "pending comments" section for manual approval by a staff member.
That workaround, which runs counter to Gawker's overall philosophy of frictionless and immediate reader engagement, is expected to roll out before the week's end.
"This ordeal has been unpleasant, but we're lucky to work at a company where raising hell gets you results instead of getting you canned," Coen wrote.
At press time, Gawker's Johnson had not responded to requests for comment about the situation at Jezebel nor the offer of help from Jasmin.
There's still a couple of takeaways for partners in this whole unusual affair.
First, it's important that any solution provider that helps deliver interactive, public-facing content infrastructure for clients understands all of the potential ramifications and absorbs the lessons that Jezebel and Jasmin learned the hard way.
Technology has greatly lowered the barriers for customer engagement, but not everyone on the internet wishes you well. The zeal for opening up the enterprise needs to be balanced with appropriate safeguards to protect the brand, the employees and the customers themselves.
More importantly, the matter, however odd, illustrates the value of thinking about partnerships unconventionally and considering opportunities for engagement in even the unlikeliest of places.
Sure Gawker, with its massive infrastructure and IT resources, might be capable of solving the Jezebel conundrum on its own. But what if it weren't? Might the services of technology professionals in a completely unrelated - and fairly misaligned - industry have some value?
It never hurts to ask. And it certainly never hurts to think far enough outside the box to pose the question.
Chris Gonsalves is vice president of content services at the 2112 Group