@Michael: I would argue that there are tens of millions of people in India who have enough proficiency in English to answer comments on blogs and solve small customer relation issues. Yes, you need processes and you need adult supervision, but it will eventually come down to the cost involved in handling a huge number of social media brand interactions.

All the concerns you have raised about social media outsourcing are valid. However, many of those concerns are also valid for telephone based customer support, much of which has been outsourced.

Many social media thinkers have a very black and white understanding of what social media should or should not do. I’m less focused on the prescriptions and more focused on the possibilities.

All communications technologies go through a cycle. First, they change how we build relationships and engage with each other and have an aura of mystique around them. Then, they become a part of our lives and we learn how to use them to achieve our objectives, in business, development, government or other areas. This happened to telephone, this happened to email (The Cluetrain Manifesto was written in a pre- social media world) and this will happen to social media.

So, yes, we haven’t seen significant social media outsourcing yet, but we will see it soon, as soon as we understand the dynamics of social media brand interactions enough to evolve processes to execute them in a structured manner.

i dont think it's really beneficial to a company to outsource the whole social media process. the relationships, trust, authority, etc, are too valuable to put in the hands of a 3rd party. however, as i mentioned above, i think we will begin to see some data oursourcing.

thanks for the comment!