Philadelphia Media Network Taps Viafoura as Critical Technology Partner to Create a Brand Safe and Civil Community

Viafoura, a leader in real-time audience engagement and moderation solutions for media companies, announces it has been chosen by Philadelphia Media Network: Philly.com, the online hub for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, to provide real-time engagement and automated moderation solutions to power their online community. Viafoura Automated Moderation uses machine learning and natural language processing to augment human moderation efforts to remove spam, harassment, personal attacks and other intolerable user generated content in real time. Combined with the Viafoura suite of engagement tools, Philly.com will create a more productive, civil and growing community for its readers and journalists to connect around the issues that matter most.

“In order to build a healthy online community, we need to invest in it. We want community management tools which allow our audience to build strong relationships with our community team, our reporters and each other,” said Kim Fox, Managing Editor, Audience Development at Philly.com. “You get the community you deserve, you need to invest in it, so we are happy to have found a platform with moderation and engagement tools that will build trust and encourage quality conversation and relationships. We’re thrilled that Viafoura is as committed to our success as we are.”

The selection marks a change from Philly.com’s unpaid use of Disqus to an investment in the publication’s online community, and an increased effort to encourage engaging, productive discourse. Viafoura’s real-time engagement and moderation suite will power real-time conversations and uphold Philly.com’s community guidelines consistently across its site in order to improve the quality of comments and increase audience engagement.

About Philadelphia Media Network, PMN

Philadelphia Media Network, PBC, (PMN) is the owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News, and Philly.com. With its multiple brand platforms and integrated print and digital products, PMN is the region’s largest news media network and the industry’s technological leader and innovator. PMN reaches an average weekly audience of 1.9 million adults – more than the combination of the four evening television news shows* or the combination of those radio stations** ranked in the top ten during drive-time programming.