Today's consumer is pretty vocal. Sometimes their voices, or opinions, are worth cultivating, aggregating and leveraging. Lithium Technolgoies has raised some $45 million in venture financing to do just that for corporations. in this first segment of my four-part series with Lyle Fong, CEO and founder of Lithium Technologies, we talk about what corporations are doing differently today (vs pre-Facebook/Twitter days) to service their customers and how Lithium is helping them tap into social communities to find their biggest fans and advocates.

Among the big brand names listed as Lithium clients are Best Buy, AT&T and Zephora. Watch my interview with Lyle as he explains how Zephora is using Lithium to help engage with its customers.

(Note: Be sure to catch our interview in which Lyle talks about how corporations are integrating game dynamics into their customer-service and marketing initiatives.)