NSS paper to be presented at AMCIS, Chicago, USA
published on Monday, May 20th 2013

Social media provide large sets of user-generated content, parts of which can be leveraged for business value. The proliferation of social media has, therefore, led to the formation of IT start-ups that provide sophisticated content analyses to businesses and public authorities. In a study conducted in the NSS project, we have analyzed a selection of business models of these start-ups. The corresponding paper "Capitalizing on Social Media Analysis – Insights from an Online Review on Business Models" has been accepted for publication at the 19th Americas Conference of Information Systems being held in Chicago August 15-17th, 2013.

Abstract:

With the rise and proliferation of social media on the Internet, social media analysis is emerging as a new business model for software companies. The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic overview of different types of such business models. After developing a coding schema based on the business model, we conducted an in-depth analysis of 16 websites of companies that actively promote social media analysis to their clients. We identified three archetypes of business models in this area: specialist content analysts, social data and application integrator, and social media service provider. Future research can build on these insights in order to focus on designing or revising methods for social media analysis to realize either of these business models. Software companies can benefit from the results by positioning their own business models in this emerging market more thoughtfully.