Facebook founder the most influential person in the tech industry

Silicone.com has elected their most influential people in technology. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has 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 industry.

Zuckerberg is arguably the embodiment of what 2006's Agenda Setters panel described as "the next generation" - ranked in second place last year. The 2006 panel described the generation as "more networked", "more open" and "more fickle" than previous ones.

Mark Zuckerberg - the fresh-faced founder and CEO of social networking site Facebook - has shot to the top of this year's silicon.com Agenda Setters list. This is the first time 23-year-old Zuckerberg has featured at all, let alone at number 1. It's a measure of the phenomenal breakthrough year it's been for the website he set up in 2004 that he's come from nowhere to land squarely in the top slot.

Coming at second place is Apple's CEO Steve Jobs, and third is Google CEO Eric Schmidt.