I am not surprise, just amazed that a site which is mostly self service and runs on UGC needs anywhere near this many people to operate. But then again, most of the people are probably hold-overs from acquisitions. As an ex VP of Ad Sales, I dont see how they'd need this many people in sales. Its almost all automated self-serve and partner driven. Even with a large US based team to manage the big spends, you're still not needing a large staff... But then again, these types of orgs tend to be filled with a lot of mediocre talent and suffer from BigDumbCompany syndrome...
I think we’ve seen that UGC is and always has been a bit of a myth. Social media companies have always quietly employed armies of people to moderate user posts, persuade famous people and Companies to post, to actually do the posting and “media strategy” for those VIPs and companies, and then of course to sell the ads and pro services that come with it all.
