If you’ve heard of the term “peer to peer network” you probably associate it with a network of computers that share information.  However, the term peer networking, or peer to peer network is also becoming synonymous with a social networking or virtual communities.
A virtual community, e-community, or online community is a group of people that primarily interact via some form of mechanism such as letters, telephone, email or other social networking site rather than face to face. If the mechanism is a computer network, it is called an online community. Virtual and online communities have also become a supplemental form of communication between people who know each other primarily in real life. A computer-mediated community uses social software to regulate the activities of participants. Significant socio-technical change has resulted from the proliferation of Internet-based social networks.
In fact, social peer to peer networks are so important to business that many marketing experts agree that businesses that ignore this new form of social marketing do so at their own peril.