By Christopher Carfi, entrepreneur and CEO of Cerado, Inc

Social media, or perhaps we should call it “social business,” is a sea of change that will affect every aspect of the organization.  Nowhere is this more evident than at the intersection between an organization and its customers.  Customers, once solely at the “receiving” end of corporate communications, are now not only entering conversations with organizations but are, more importantly, increasingly entering into online conversations with each other around products and brands.

What is social media?

In both professional and personal life, human beings naturally form groups based on affinities and expertise. We gravitate to others with whom we share interests. Most of us belong to real world networks that formed organically. Not surprisingly, these networks rapidly migrated to the online world.

Online social networking has been around in various forms for nearly a decade, and has begun to achieve wide notice in the past few years.  Online social networks take many forms, and are created for many reasons. Despite their differences, online social networks do, however, commonly exhibit a number of the following concepts.