Hemanshu Nigam: Mr. Safety for MySpace

Can CSO Hemanshu Nigam make MySpace a safe neighborhood, without also making it an empty one?

"The advertisers who talk to us are saying, If your site has people who are getting victimized or hit by viruses and there are dangers there, then we don't want to align our brand with yours," Nigam says. "So there's this really cool synergy between doing safety for business reasons and doing safety because it's the right thing to do. You don't find that in many places. The [safer it is], the greater your reputation; the greater your reputation, the more advertisers feel comfortable in talking to the 135 million people who are on the site. If you don't do that, then you have 135 million units of overhead cost, and that's one of the worst investments you could make."

During a phone call weeks later, he expands on this point, saying that all the talk about the business rationale for improving security on MySpace recalled the driving rationale of his career.

"I remember my first day of training in the Los Angeles District Attorney's office, and the deputy stood up to give us a speech about what it's like to work in the DA's office," he says. "Near the end of it he said, ‘You know, one of the greatest things you're going to find out about this job is every single day, you get to come to work and do the right thing.' I heard that, and I was like, I guess I'm never going to leave. And so every single time I've gone to a new job, I go mentally through that debate of, am I going to go there to do the right thing? Coming here, I kept thinking to myself, you know, if I join I can come to work to do the right thing. Keeping our members safe, that's doing the right thing. Keeping our site secure, that's doing the right thing. And when we do that, it has a major business impact, and that just makes it all the better.

"I'm the guy who gets to come to work to do the right thing."

Reach Senior Editor Sarah D. Scalet at sscalet@cxo.com.