In the social environment characterized by increasingly developed information technologies and intelligence, social interactions and social behavior have great impacts on the whole operations management system. With the innovation of social economic activities, the impacts of social interactions and social factors attract much attention. The social operations management is becoming a increasingly hot research field. Social operations management refers to the operations management that takes social interactions and social factors into consideration. By analyzing the causes and the impacts of socialization from the perspectives of social interaction, the diversity of social values, and the development of new business models, this paper elaborates the necessity and the urgency of social operations management. After that, the main means to realize socialization are analyzed in detail. Furthermore, this paper reviews the related literature on theoretical research from the following three streams: social learning, social comparison and social effect; the application analysis includes the social businesses and the sharing economy. Finally, some future research directions are proposed according to the latest research.