In our increasingly virtual world individuals are creating value through their every online action, but who benefits from this value? Sometimes the value is explicit - such as the information about yourself you submit to social networking or ecommerce sites. More often the value is implicit - generated through the choices you make (or don't make) in directing your attention, or the ratings you assign to other users or content. This panel discusses the issues faced by both business and consumers in generating, maintaining, understanding and benefiting from this value.
When sharing personal information with a company there is a level of trust required. But what if the user doesn't fully understand the implications of the relationship? Or if the company acts within it's stated policy but against the expectation of the user?
It would be great to know who's been viewing your profile and how they got there. Or would it? Do you want to be contacted just because you were confirming an identity? Is total transparency within a network viable?
These and other important issues touching on online identity and reputation management are discussed by an experienced panel of three people who consider such issues on a regular basis.
Kyle Brinkman is a co-founder and VP of Product Development at MySpace. With over eighty million users worldwide, MySpace is the leading social networking, community, and lifestyle portal. Committed to the MySpace vision of a socially-generated web, Brinkman has focussed on such areas as blogs, events, calendering, and currently heads up the search, messaging, and voice initiatives. Prior to Myspace, Brinkman was a Product Manager at Intermix Media and developed guided selling systems at Dealtime (now Shopping.com) He is a graduate of Carleton College and holds a Masters in Economic History from UC Berkeley.
Seth Goldstein is founder and CEO of Root Markets. In 2002, he founded Majestic Research, the leading data-driven, independent research firm on Wall Street. In 1995, he founded SiteSpecific, one of the first Internet advertising agencies. Prior to Majestic, Goldstein was the first Entrepreneur in Residence at Flatiron Partners/JP Morgan Partners, a New York based technology venture capital firm. Since 1999, he has been a director and member of the Audit Committee for Valassis (VCI), a marketing services firm ranked by Fortune magazine as one of the best companies to work for in America. Goldstein is an investor and advisor to early-stage companies (including del.icio.us) and recently completed a blog series on Media Futures (http://majestic.typepad.com) which will be released as a book in 2006.
John McCrea, vice president of marketing for Plaxo, has had a significant impact on the evolution of the web as a new medium and a platform for communication. While at SGI, he struck the very first website sponsorship deal, and coined the term "Powered by..." as the de facto standard for such promotions. He was the driving force behind SGI's WebFORCE, the first turnkey web server, in 1995. Prior to Plaxo, John held the position of senior vice president of marketing at Radiance Technologies, developer of a breakthrough "digital FedEx" software solution. Before Radiance, John co-founded Affinia, a pioneer in contextual web advertising, which developed a predecessor to Google's AdSense.John earned an M.B.A. from Stanford University and an S.B. Humanities from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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