In the first part of the two part interview series with Sameer Pitalwalla, CEO of Culture Machine, we learned about Culture Machine's new brand intelligence machine, its approach to Facebook and Facebook video. In the second part, Pitalwalla speaks about Culture Machine's approach to talent management in their network and handling competition among others. Talent management MediaNama: How do you choose the talent you work with? Do you take on all that sign up with you or is there a benchmark? Pitalwalla: With the launch of the creator platform, anybody can join the network. But we need to curate because the talent needs to have clarity in terms of rights and the not-copyrighted content which causes problems in terms of rights management. The talent needs to be clear about the legitimacy of the content. We have an internal process in place. We work with talent to mentor and grow them. We also create and fund programming based on metrics like content hygiene, their previous uploads, their watch time on that content, their viewership. This also includes their subscriber base in the last 30- 60 days, what kind of programming we think they can work on etc. Besides looking at rights, we work with creators to join the network, but depending on the metrics, we decide how deeply we should engage with them. MediaNama: What kind of engagement levels do you have with creators? Pitalwalla: The levels of engagement are based on metrics like their previous created content, how often they…
