<p>This post is part of a series in which LinkedIn Influencers pick one big idea that will shape 2014. See all the ideas here.</p><p>Sometime in the late 90s, we hit a tipping point after which it was just not acceptable to not be on email. The same thing has happened with social media. Social media is no longer optional but expected and even mandatory for both consumers and businesses.</p><p>When Steve and I pitched the original Hearsay Social business plan up and down Sand Hill Road in 2010, many venture capital firms dismissed our idea of building a social business platform because they thought Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn were passing fads headed for the same fate as MySpace and Friendster. (Thankfully, Sequoia Capital invested in March 2010.) It's amazing that less than four years later, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are now all publicly traded (and doing quite well, I might add!) with a combined market cap of over $150 billion.</p><p>Today, there are over 1 billion monthly active users on Facebook, 259 million monthly actives on LinkedIn, and 232 million on Twitter, and businesses large and small are following suit-- social business is still one of the fastest-growing areas of investment and focus. For many organizations, social business has elevated to a CXO- and board-level imperative due to its potential for disruption, transformation, insights, and engagement by customers and employees alike.</p><p><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20131210125619-897481-big-idea-2014-social-business-grows-up">Keep reading...</a></p>