Hitting Them Where They Live: The Emergence of Local Online Advertising

Chris Tolles is the CEO of Topix.com, the largest news community on the Web.

Chris came to Topix from Spoke Software, a business social networking company, where he was a co-founder and VP of marketing. Before Spoke, Chris was a Director of Marketing at AOL/Netscape for AOL Music, Netscape Search and Directory Products. Chris was a co-founder and VP of Marketing at NewHoo, and led the sale of the company to Netscape. After the acquisition, NewHoo was relaunched as the Open Directory Project at Netscape and became the world’s largest human edited directory of the web, and is still used by companies like Google, Alexa and AOL. Previous to NewHoo, Chris held a variety of sales, marketing and management positions at Sun Microsystems. Chris graduated from the University of California at San Diego with degrees in Computer Science and Economics, where he was awarded the Michael Addison award for his senior thesis about the online information industry.

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Steven Johnson is the best-selling author of five books on the intersection of science, technology and personal experience, including the New York Times Notable Book The Ghost Map and Everything Bad Is Good For You, one of the most talked about books of 2005. He is also the co-creator of three influential web sites: FEED, Plastic.com, and most recently, the hyperlocal community site outside.in.Steven is a contributing editor for Wired magazine and a Distinguished Writer In Residence at the New York University Department of Journalism. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three sons, and blogs at stevenberlinjohnson.com.