September’s Future Human event takes place on Wednesday 14 at The Book Club, and we can now announce the theme and the panel. It’s entitled Social Animals, and we’ll be exploring how social networking is evolving to create transactable value out of our common human desires.

Google revolutionised the advertising world with its search advertising, which served consumers with relevant advertising based on what they were looking for, and made billions of dollars in the process. Over the last five years, Facebook has been manoeuvring itself into what could be an even more powerful position: one where its users do the advertising on behalf of brands, without even realising it. By turning ‘like’ from a verb into a noun, Facebook is ensuring that all of our tastes and alliances are being turned into clickable marketing opportunities.

But as well as the rise of this ‘social commerce’, social networks are growing in number and becoming ever more niche, serving every human desire imaginable, from finding on-trend clothing (Lyst) to philanthropy (Jumo) and even adultery (AshleyMadison). Meanwhile companies are creating their own bespoke social networks to create communities away from the hubbub of Twitter and Facebook. But with our lives being played out online and our complex tastes being reduced to thumbs up/thumbs down binaries, is the network triumphing over the individual, and are our personalities changing as a result?

Joining us to discuss this fascinating, lucrative and potentially troubling new world are the following:

Alex Halliday is the founder and CEO of SocialGo, a successful London-based startup that since its launch two years ago has also opened an office in Silicon Valley. It offers companies the means to build their own social networks, free from SocialGo branding, to allow their customers unprecedented intimacy and access, as well as loyalty rewards, offers, news and other interactivity. Its clients include Apple, WalMart, Levis, Oxfam and Random House, and is listed on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM market.

Rich Martell is the youthful social networking entrepreneur who became infamous for launching FitFinder last year while still studying at University College London. The service allowed for location-based marking of attractive people that the user spotted, complete with flirtatious messaging; the site attracted quarter of a million users in the first month, before the university intervened. It returned in early 2011 after a round of angel investment as Floxx, complete with its own iPhone app.

Xi Zou is an Assistant Professor at London Business School focusing on Organisational Behaviour; her research examines human behaviour within social networks on and offline, and how we modify those behaviours as a result of who we interact and surround ourselves with. After receiving a BA and MPhil at universities in Hong Kong, she received an MPhil and PhD from Columbia University, New York.

You’ll be able to pose them your own questions, and we’ll have all the usual Future Human primer talks, interactive segments, big-screen Twitter chatter, informal booze-enhanced networking and the finest, most nuanced debate in London. Tickets go on sale from August 11, the day after our next event, Micro Manufacturing. We hope to see you at both!