Online Personas: Defining the Self in a Virtual World
Online social networking sites are now among the most popular web sites on the internet. Facebook is the seventh most trafficked site in the U.S., and millions of young trendsetters have made MySpace and Second Life the most disruptive forces to hit pop culture since MTV. LinkedIn is at the forefront of an emerging networking frontier focused on business and boasting a network of more than 7 million professionals. In a world of IMers, bloggers, podcasters, burners, P2P buccaneers, mashup artists and phonecam paparazzi, people have entirely new ways of expressing and reinventing themselves, and fact can blend with fiction. The founders of the most successful and innovative web sites allowing people to interact, trade, meet and network will explore how their sites are evolving to keep up with the future of online networking.
The Commonwealth Club of California
595 Market St.
San Francisco, 94102
United States
David Ewing Duncan
Contributing Editor and Columnist, Conde Nast Portfolio; Chief Correspondent, NPR's "Biotech Nation"; Commentator, NPR's "Morning Edition"; Director, UC Berkeley Center forLife Science Policy; Author, Experimental Man: What One Man's Body Reveals about His Future, Your Health, and Our Toxic World
Shawn Gold
Robin Harper
Reid Hoffman
Co-founder, LinkedIn
Mark Zuckerberg
Founder, Facebook