CIO.com reports on the top six ways social media has affected business, for better and worse, in 2012. Without further ado, here are their picks for the top most-impacted business segments (plus one they forgot…)

1. Marketing — It should come as no surprise that social media has not only made marketing cheaper (Facebook pages are free, after all), but it has also made market research cheaper and easier. Facebook and Twitter polls can gather easily quantifiable data in real time. Need a look what your customers are thinking in real time? You can now use sites like Bottlenose to pull insights from their social pages and send out customized messages accurate to the millisecond.

2. R&D — Again, it should not surprise anyone that social media improves research and product development, mostly because it provides quantifiable data without the need to publish surveys. As CIO has pointed out earlier, managers no longer need to ask a research firm what their customers think. They can simply ask their customers what they think.

3. Employee Communications — In the words of Marcelo Costa, Chief Marketing Officer for global business and IT consulting firm Neoris: “Using social media [can be] very useful in managing communication among employees. We have a LinkedIn group exclusively for employees. The group is managed by the employees and they are the ones who create content, share news and comment on industry trends.”

4. Customer Service — Using Facebook and Twitter to guage customer satisfaction not only makes it less expensive to develop new products, but to solve the problems of current products. That’s why a modern call center already has a good guess about why you are calling before you even pick up the phone.

5. Recruitment — “A site like LinkedIn provides a more efficient way to screen for possible job applicants, as you can see if people have recommendations, endorsements, etc.,” says Tracy Petrucci, a social media and online marketing consultant, who also notes that many recruiters also look at candidates’ Twitter feeds and Facebook profiles to assess whether the hire will be a good fit.

6. Security — Social media has never had a reputation as a particularly… erm… secure, platform, which is why it has become very important to Chief Information Officers. After all, if your job is to amass and hold company information, any tools that you can’t control, could potentially spread information very quickly, or have a tendency to be hacked become extremely important.

As much as we loved reading this list, here’s one that should have been included:

7. Financing — Social media not only helps link investors to firms they may want to invest in, it can make first round financing much easier. This is why we on the OPUSfidelis blog team are such huge fans of Kickstarter.

There you have it — the top seven areas where social media has and is changing business, for better or worse. As we head in to 2013, what changes do you think this new technology will bring business in the new year?