Agenda Setters 2007

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg's meteoric rise from nowhere to Agenda Setters top spot proves that 2007 is the year of social networking. Natasha Lomas looks at how that trend plays out in the Top 50.

You don't have to be a web user to know about social networking. Pick up a newspaper and chances are it won't be long before you stumble on a story about Facebook.

2007 is the year social networking went mainstream, appealing to the masses rather than purely to geeky cliques or niche interest groups. It is this breakthrough that the Agenda Setters panel was interested in.

Web 2.0 phenomena have certainly piqued the panel's interest before. Last year, second on the list was "the next generation" - aka kids growing up immersed in a web world of MySpaces and YouTubes. Rupert Murdoch was also given credit for his decision to put big bucks into social networking by buying MySpace. And he's still making the Agenda Setters list on the back of this investment foresight - albeit down 25 places, from 4 to 29.

But this year the talk was about how social networking has reached boiling point. And the man the panel credit with achieving this is not 76-year-old Murdoch but 23-year-old founder and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg - this year's agenda setting kingpin. So it's very much a case of out with the old, in with the new - as one Agenda Setters panellist said of Murdoch: "He must wish he'd bought Facebook."

Panellist Michael Parsons, editor and site director of CNET.co.uk, made a strong case for Facebook. He said Facebook is a social networking platform that has attracted professionals. "If a MySpace screen comes up at work it is embarrassing. But if Facebook comes up it kind of looks like a proper application. It's shot through the London media, which means that it will be hard to kill it with a stick," said Parsons. "I have a sense that there has been a tipping point in which social networking has become attractive to a whole bunch of people who aren't very technical," he added.

The panel commended Zuckerberg for masterminding the rise of a mature social networking product - one that is very usable and inclusive in style, and which has achieved phenomenal user growth.

The young CEO's decision to open up Facebook to third parties as a developer platform augurs the creation of a "Facebook universe", they said, envisaging lesser online technologies being sucked into it as mere plug-ins.

Beyond Facebook, the panel sees social networking becoming increasingly important, as a tool for communication, collaboration and even social change - enabling people to create and own their own content. Its future sphere of influence is likely to extend beyond dedicated websites and into more dusty corners of the establishment.

As one panellist from the public sector - Steve Palmer, IT director for the London Borough of Hillingdon - pointed out: "If you are going to engage kids as they become citizens, then we are going to have to engage them on their terms and not on ours."

The power of social networks to forge links and foster collaboration between people while cutting across traditional boundaries of geography and politics was another factor the panel picked up on. This is why Premal Shah, president of Kiva.org and 36 on the Agenda Setters list, came to their attention.

Kiva uses social networking as a simple, inexpensive way of building relationships between individuals with money to lend and entrepreneurs in the developing world in need of a cash injection.

Virtual worlds were also discussed. But the panel was less sure of the strength of the offerings in this field, specifically dismissing Linden Lab's Second Life as premature, over-hyped and lacking a sense of purpose for users. Essentially: "the thing that comes before the thing".

As panellist Carolyn Kimber, of communications user group the CMA, said: "People don't have the time to play around with something that they don't understand and… don't see a value to."

But multiplayer online games such as World of Warcraft did impress - and Rob Pardo, lead designer on WoW, makes his debut on the Agenda Setters list at 23. After all, visitors to Warcraft know exactly why they're there.

The gaming community is where the "big developments in virtual worlds are happening", according to Agenda Setters panellist and analyst at Freeform Dynamics, Jon Collins. "Right now there is a hell of a lot of innovation [there]," he said, adding: "Teenagers are hard to please."

So expect social networking to keep on putting itself out there, challenging conventional ways of working and forging partnerships in unexpected places. Keeping the kids happy is likely to be only the beginning of the story for this technology.