Tag Archives: Social Media Outsourcing

Get a Sneak Preview of My Chapter for ‘Age of Conversation 2: Why Don’t People Get It?’

Friday, May 16th, 2008

Quick Summary: Get a sneak preview of my chapter for ‘Age of Conversation 2: Why Don’t People Get It?’; it’s called ‘The Case for Social Media Outsourcing’.

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The Age of Conversation 2: Why Don't People Get It?

I have just submitted my chapter for ‘The Age of Conversation 2: Why Don’t People Get It?’ and it’s called ‘The Case for Social Media Outsourcing’.

The chapter is based on my earlier post about social media outsourcing (also see), and its basic premise is that social media outsourcing will be a significant part of the third wave of Indian outsourcing (worth $50bn by 2012), making it the next big business opportunity for India.

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As I had mentioned earlier, ‘The Age of Conversation 2′ will have 275 contributors against the 100 for the original ‘Age of Conversation’ and the chapters will be focused on eight sections related to the broad ‘Why Don’t People Get It?’ theme of the book. Here’s a sneak preview of the eight sections to whet your appetite –

# Manifestos — Declarations, up front, on the Age of Conversation. Why don’t people get it? What about companies? Where are things going? What can you help clarify?

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The World is Not Flat and Neither is the Social Web

Saturday, May 10th, 2008

Quick Summary: I’m starting a new series on why the social web is not flat and why it’s a good thing.

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It has been fashionable for a while now to describe the world as ‘globalized’. Ever since Thomas Friedman’s ode to globalization, ‘The World is Flat’, became a runaway bestseller in 2005, it has also become fashionable to describe the world as ‘flat’. Indians, in particular, have a special fondness for Friedman’s book because Friedman is enamored with the Indian IT industry and the title was derived from a statement by Nandan Nilekani, the former CEO of Infosys.

While the ‘world is flat’ metaphor has been much abused over the last three years, even Friedman’s original argument (that historical, regional and geographical divisions have become irrelevant in a global marketplace where all companies and countries have a level playing field) is quite exaggerated.

In a series of posts written over the next few weeks, I’ll establish that the world is not truly globalized, but ’semi-globalized’ (as Pankaj Ghemawat describes it in ‘Redefining Global Strategy’) or ‘rough-correlated’ (a term used by Eric Beinhocker in ‘The Origin of Wealth’).

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Next Big Thing: Social Media Outsourcing (SMO) (Part 2 of 2)

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

Quick Summary: Read a soon-to-be-real scenario featuring imaginary Indian Social Media Outsourcing (SMO) company BuzzPundit to understand why SMO will be the next big business opportunity for India after BPO and KPO.

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If you found it difficult to believe my assertion that social media outsourcing (SMO) will be the next big business opportunity for India, let me present a soon-to-be-real scenario featuring imaginary Indian SMO company BuzzPundit.

Imagine a sprawling corporate campus on the outskirts of a large Indian metro (take your pick from Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Gurgaon or Pune). Imagine 10000 twenty-something Indians sitting in front of their computer screens. If you must, think of a call center. Except that these twenty-somethings are not making call after call to customers in the US; they are reading articles, posts and comments and tagging them, or responding to them.

Welcome to BuzzPundit. You are at the corporate campus of one of India’s many social media outsourcing (SMO) companies.

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Next Big Thing: Social Media Outsourcing (SMO) (Part 1 of 2)

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

Quick Summary: Read why Social Media Outsourcing (SMO) will be the next big business opportunity for India after Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO).

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Social media practitioners often talk about it in cryptic “conversation is an art form” terms, but you can break down the social media delivery process in six discrete steps that correspond to the oft-quoted Listen -> Understand -> Engage model:-

1. Data collection
2. Data mining
3. Data analysis
4. Insight delivery
5. Consulting
6. Solution delivery

Six Step Social Media Delivery Process

If you look hard at these six steps, you’ll find that many of them are driven by dynamics that make them very susceptible to outsourcing –

The Case for Social Media Outsourcing

While the details are best dealt in a white paper, or a business plan another post, here’s a summary of what steps in the social media delivery process are most susceptible to outsourcing –

- Data-collection and insight delivery will involve a one-time process set-up, after which they’ll be more or less automated via crawlers and dashboards respectively.

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