One of the most high-profile and sought-after session at the Annual Meeting was the session on the growing influence of social networks, a workshop where representatives from all main social networks were present.

The discussion, moderated by Loïc Le Meur, Founder of Seesmic included among others Gina Bianchini, CEO, Ning, Reid Hoffman, Founder, LinkedIn, Owen Van Natta, CEO, MySpace.com and Evan Williams, CEO, Twitter, Don Tapscott, Ngenera and George Colony, CEO, Forrester Research, Randi Zuckerberg, Marketing Director, Facebook, Steve Grove, Head of News and Politics, YouTube, Tim Berners-Lee, Director, World Wide Web Consortium, and Michael Arrington, Founder, TechCrunch.

Randi Zuckerberg from Facebook ran a quick poll receiving feedback from over 6000 people on Facebook in only two minutes. Steve Grove from demonstrated YouTube Moderator and you can read the responses here.

Here is the video of the 2-hour session, highlights of the discussions below.




On the state of social networks:

"7 of 15 most trafficked sites are social networks." – George Colony, CEO Forrester Research.

Twitter: 25 Million unique visitors/day, flatlined over the last 6 months

Facebook: 130 Million unique visitors/day, increase over the last 6 months

MySpace: 50-60 Million unique visitors/day, declined over the last 6 months

LinkedIn: 15 Million unique visitors/day, increased over the last 6 months

Ning: 6 Million Unique visitors/day, declined over the last 3 months

(Forrester Research)

On sharing personal information online:

"All issues of privacy are old people issues. " Reid Hoffman, CEO LinkedIn

On the new way we consume content:

"We are able to efficiently consume media through people, rather than limited sources of content." Owen Van Natta, CEO of Myspace

On the biggest thing in 2009:

"The main thing that we saw in 2009, was that outside of silicon valley, social platforms went mainstream," Gina Bianchini, CEO and co-founder of Ning.

On discussing world issues: 

"It's not enough to have 6 world leaders discussing important issues, let's bring 350 million people into it too," Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook

Extending the conversation:

One of the ways we expanded the conversation was through the use of Twitter. With the tag #DavosSocial, we were able to hear what people outside of Davos had to say.