Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has today been named the most influential person in the high-tech industry by a panel of experts in the eighth annual Agenda Setter's poll by silicon.com. The Agenda Setters Top 50 focuses on the people driving and shaping the tech industry in 2007 and is a barometer of success within the IT sector.
Mark Zuckerberg, just 23 years old, has rocketed to the top spot above the likes of Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Rupert Murdoch, after failing to appear at all in last year's rankings. Launched just three and a half years ago, Facebook's popularity has exploded in 2007, with the social networking giant growing to more than 42 million active users across the world. In the UK alone, the site has tripled its reach from 2.7 million users to 9 million users in the past six months .
The Top 10 Agenda Setters for 2007 are:
- Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook
- Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple
- Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google
- John Chambers, CEO, Cisco
- Ashley Highfield, BBC technologist
- Nicholas Negroponte, laptop creator
- Niklas Zennström, former CEO, Skype
- Diane Greene, VMware president
- Jonathan Ive, Apple chief designer
- Viviane Reding, European commissioner
The new wave?
This year's poll also sees other social networking figures and blogs featuring highly, with Rob Pardo, World of Warcraft (23), Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing (41) and prominent tech blogger, Michael Arrington from Tech Crunch (35) all making the top 50. Meanwhile, 2007 is the first year in the poll's history that anyone from Microsoft (33) has not been included within the top 20 on the list. Other notable omissions include individuals from major technology players like Motorola, Nokia and Samsung. This represents a huge shift in the technology space, as those from the new wave of social networks and online communities have risen from relative insignificance to become, in some cases, more influential than the veterans of the industry.
This year also marks another significant change as an unprecedented number of technology chiefs from user organisations have secured a place on the list. The CIOs of five user organisations including British Airways (11) and Virgin America (25) enter the top 30. The survey also marks the rising dominance of Asian companies with those from Infosys, Huawei and Wipro making the final 50, as the global balance of power continues to shift from West to East.
Tony Hallett, editor and site director of silicon.com, said: "Our annual poll continues to expose the latest trends and driving forces in the technology industry and it has been fascinating to watch the rapid changes that have taken place over the last 12 months. Up until 2004, CEOs, politicians and regulators topped the polls every year. Clearly, the tech industry has undergone a massive transformation since then, as now a 23 year old has taken the top slot as the CEO of one of the largest social networks in the world. Online communities are certainly the most talked-about tech trend this year."
The full results and special report are available at www.siliconagendasetters.com.
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Notes to Editors
The 2007 Agenda Setters Top 50 is:
- Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder
- Steve Jobs, Apple CEO
- Eric Schmidt, Google CEO
- John Chambers, Cisco CEO
- Ashley Highfield, BBC technologist
- Nicholas Negroponte, laptop creator
- Niklas Zennström, Skype CEO
- Diane Greene, VMware president
- Jonathan Ive, Apple chief designer
- Viviane Reding, Euro commissioner
- Paul Coby, BA CIO
- Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com CEO
- Emily Bell, Guardian Unlimited editor
- Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO
- Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO
- Ben Verwaayen, BT CEO
- Nandan Nilekani, Infosys
- David Yu, Betfair CEO
- Satoru Iwata, Nintendo CEO
- Mark Hurd, HP CEO
- Mo Ibrahim, ex-Celtel
- James Murdoch, BSkyB
- Rob Pardo, World of Warcraft
- Michael Moritz, venture capitalist
- Bill Maguire, Virgin America CIO
- Rorie Devine, Betfair CTO
- Meg Whitman, eBay CEO
- Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo writer
- Rupert Murdoch, News Corp CEO
- Ren Zhengfei, Huawei Tech founder
- Azim Premji, Wipro chairman
- Daniel Rimer, venture capitalist
- Kim Cameron, Microsoft ID chief
- Vinod Khosla, venture capitalist
- Michael Arrington, TechCrunch
- Premal Shah, Kiva president
- Lawrence Lessig, law professor
- Paul Otellini, Intel CEO
- Bruce Perens, open source advocate
- Richard Stallman, GNU founder
- Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing
- Charles Dunstone, Carphone CEO
- Bruce Schneier, security expert
- Linus Torvalds, Linux kernel initiator
- Tim O’Reilly, Web 2.0 guy
- Luis von Ahn, Captcha
- Geelen and Pauwels, TomTom
- JP Rangaswami, BT Global CIO
- Blake Ross Firefox founder
- Trevor Baylis, inventor
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