We've all seen the stories about how social media, social networking, and social sharing are changing our lives. In fact, a recent TechCrunch article states that 44% of social sharing on the web happens on Facebook, followed by 29% on Twitter, 18% on Yahoo, and 9% on MySpace. Digging deeper, one begins to get an idea of just how social the web is becoming. According to Facebook statistics, more than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc) are shared on their site each week. Divide that by the 400 million users and you find that, on average, each user is sharing 12 pieces of content with their network each week. Almost 10% (35 million) of all Facebook users provide daily status updates. These statistics suggest that social interaction amongst the Internet population is becoming a key part of the web experience.

Based on these statistics, how does your company's quality of social interaction rate? On your company's Twitter page, is success defined only by having a large number of followers to push your content? Does your company Facebook page restrict fans from posting on your wall? Does your company happily consume shared content without passing it on to your network? Does your company check out interesting blog posts and videos but never provide any commentary? Does your company click on tweeted and retweeted links without ever continuing the sharing of the content? If you answered YES to any/all of the previous questions, keep in mind that your company's behavior is creating an impediment to the further evolution of the social web.

Forrester Research categorizes social computing behavior into 7 categories of participation: 24% of Internet users are content creators, 33% conversationalists, 37% critics, 20% collectors, 59% joiners, 70% spectators, and 17% inactives (the numbers do not add up to 100% due to overlap in group participation). Content creators are obviously an important piece of the interactive social puzzle. While passionate about their subject matter, content creators also appreciate social interaction via comments, tweets, retweets, diggs, stumbles, and emails.

At our core, human beings are social creatures. Just because we are seemingly isolated behind our networked machines focused on achieving corporate objectives does not mean the well evolved rules of social interaction do not apply. As an experiment, see if there are tangible benefits to your company becoming more social on the web. I think you'll be surprised by the results.

-Omowale Casselle

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About the Author: Omowale Casselle is the co-founder and CEO of mySenSay Inc., a social recruiting community that connects college students and corporations.