November 24th, 2008
Social Media Outsourcing (SMO) Leads the Third Wave of Indian Outsourcing
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In March 2008, when I called social media outsourcing the next big business opportunity for India, nobody else was talking about social media outsourcing. Now, less than a year later, it seems that social media outsourcing may be leading the third wave of Indian outsourcing.
Recently, Daya Baran at Webguild wrote a great post on social media outsourcing in India –
While U.S. companies struggle to figure out how to monetize social media, India’s tech industry has quietly figured out a way to make hundreds of millions (maybe billions) by servicing it. Everything from simple comments on blog posts, to breaking sophisticated Google CAPTCHAs, Craigslist listings, Gmail invites, Yahoo personals, MySpace profiles, YouTube uploads, Facebook friends, and now I hear Twitter tweets are all being performed in India on behalf of social networking sites, blogs, photo sharing, video, and other social media and Web 2.0 sites that depend heavily on online advertising as a revenue source are using these services to boost traffic and users.
Evan though India’s $2 per thousand CAPTCHA-solving companies like DeCaptcher have become the most debated example of such outsourcing, thanks to the expose by ZDNet’s Dancho Danchev, they are hardly representative of social media outsourcing in India.
Several small social media agencies in India are now designing and executing entire social media campaigns for international clients. Several Indian players, like Mumbai-based Informm, even offer sophisticated online brand monitoring solutions.
A surprisingly high percentage of the development work for social networking sites built on content management systems like Drupal and Joomla is offshored to Indian players, like Ahmedabad-based Gloscon. Similarly, I won’t be surprised if a high percentage of blog and website design work on freelance websites like Elance, oDesk and Guru go to small Indian freelancers like Blog Design Studio.
Several focused knowledge process management (KPO) companies are offering social media outsourcing services in one form or another. Chennai based PreMedia offers offshore content development services. New Delhi based Bettersense Outsource offers ad posting services. Bangalore based 2Adpro offers offshore advertising design and production services. Ahmedabad based Info Analytica offers user generated content marketing solutions. There are several other small to medium sized KPOs offering similar services and even large KPOs like Evalueserve are now entering the business.
Over time, these players will develop expertise in specific industries and functions. Hyderabad based Pressmart, for instance, offers new media content delivery services for newspapers and counts Birmingham Post, CNBC Europe, Bangkok Post, The Sun, Hindustan Times, Deccan Chronicle, Indian Express, and Lokmat as clients.
Social media outsourcing in India is still unchartered territory — a confusing mix of reputed innovative players and shady fly-by-night operators — and best practices and industry leaders are still to emerge. However, I see a one year window in which the industry will be defined and reputations will be made. The right time to enter the social media outsourcing business in India is right now.
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Great post, Gaurav. I think SMM has come a long way from being a practice which involves pasting URLs on blogs and Yahoo! Answers.
Companies today are willing to listen to what the consumer is saying and react accordingly. Case-in-point being the recent Motrin viral video phenomena, Nokia Word of Mouth and Alon who works for GoDaddy at twitter.com/godaddyguy.
Pinstorm (http://www.Pinstorm.com) is the first pay-for-performance advertising MNC based out of India that engages in social media marketing, apart from other forms of internet advertising to give the client the best reach possible on the internet.
Best,
Asfaq Tapia
PS: Happy Birthday, Gaurav
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