One of the most powerful and focused uses of an online social network is to permit customers to share their experiences with a particular product or service.  Such Product User Groups serve multiple purposes:

• Put the organization in touch with its most active and engaged customers
  
• Improve brand loyalty and loyalty to the product
• Expand the use and utility of a product
• Surface product problems
• Determine desired product enhancements
• Open a strong marketing channel

When a group of people forms an online community around their common interest in a particular product, the organization can derive tremendous value at low cost. 

By definition, the members of such a community are putting themselves forward as interested and concerned.  Those members are, perhaps, the most important group of customers.  They are the trendsetters, and the most active and involved users.  By giving them a place to voice their interests, solutions, experiences, concerns, questions, and expertise, those very important customers can derive much greater value from their ownership of the product, and strengthen a sense of product and brand loyalty.

The organization will learn about what is and what isn't working well; what those active users would like to see in product development; as well as the ways in which they are actually using the product.  Often times users will discover interesting uses that the organization didn't contemplate, and that experience could potentially open up entirely new markets for the product.