Hi Andrea, I'm totally in agreement with you that this area is subject to extreme hype, and I look forward to someone doing some proper research on the likes of Samasource and txteagle for us to really to see what their outcomes are :) However, I do think that the idea of impact/social outsourcing has merit which deserves attention. It starts from the empirical evidence from Asia that BPO/outsourcing generally brings benefits to middle-class and educated but with little trickle down to those closer to poverty......and social outsourcing has been successful in many cases in reaching such groups! (e.g See 'datamation' in India who employ over thousands from poor backgrounds in outsourcing, or my supervisor Richard Heeks' research in India related to small enterprise outsourcing http://ict4dblog.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/development-2-0-case-study-sociall... ) Also, I'm not sure the larger BPO players have much to fear from this competition. Larger players by their nature will deal with larger batches of work with higher quality requirements. In the case of India's there seems to be no evidence that the 'conventional' BPO sector has been adversely effected by the presence and publicity of such social organizations. For what I hear there is some government in such ideas in Kenya, and this makes sense. BPO is central to Vision 2030, but it is an expensive undertaking. It seems logical that planners would look for ways to improve the equitable outcomes of such large investments throughout society, rather than their investing leading in increasing IT-led inequality.... Thanks Chris -- Christopher Foster PhD Researcher, Centre for Development Informatics (CDI) IDPM, University of Manchester, UK Skype: cgfoster