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Home » Social Media » Top 100 Most Innovative and Influential People in the Web 2.0 World

Top 100 Most Innovative and Influential People in the Web 2.0 World

Posted on April 26, 2010 Written by Bill Hartzer

internet evolutionInternet Evolution has come up with their first-ever list of the top 100 most innovative and influential people in the Web 2.0 world. In the social networking category, Mark Zuckerberg, the Founder of Facebook, beat out Kevin Rose, the Founder of Digg.

In the search category, the heads of Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! were named, but surprisingly Jason Calacanis of Mahalo was named, as well.

Internet Evolution has narrowed down the list into 10 different categories, which include the most innovative and influential people in each category:
Social Networking
Enterprise & Cloud Computing
News/Media
Greentech
Wireless & Gadgets
E-Commerce
Search
Security
Digital Entertainment
Most Over-Rated

I am particularly interested in the Search category, where Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Founders of Google, were named first. Stefan Weitz of Microsoft and Carol Bartz of Yahoo were also named, and Jason Calacanis was also named in the Search category.

Here is the list of the top 10 most innovative and influential people in search:

1. Larry Page, Founder, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)
2. Stefan Weitz, Director of Search, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)
3. Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO)
4. Jason Calacanis, Founder, Mahalo.com Inc.
5. Robin Li, originator of Baidu Inc. (Nasdaq: BIDU) search technology
6. Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia
7. Vipul Ved Prakash, Founder, Topsy.com
8. Jack Ma, Founder, Alibaba.com Hong Kong Ltd.
9. Alan Emtage, creator of pre-Web search engine Archie
10. Suranga Chandratillake, CEO, blinkx

Being in the search industry, I’m not sure if I totally agree with this list, as there are some websites that are in the list that I don’t necessarily think are really “search engines”. I would also name a few individuals like Danny Sullivan to the search category before I named Jason Calacanis to the search category. I agree that Calacanis should be named somewhere, but not in the search category.

Here is the list of the top 100 most innovative and influential people in the Web 2.0 World:

1) Social Networking

1. Mark Zuckerberg, Founder, Facebook
2. Kevin Rose, Founder, Digg
3. Jonathan Miller, Chief Digital Officer, News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) (MySpace )
4. Philip Rosedale, Founder, Second Life
5. Jeff Weiner, CEO, LinkedIn Corp.
6. Caterina Fake, Founder, Flickr
7. Adam Christensen, Social Media Communications Manager, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM)
8. Jonathan Abrams, Founder, Friendster
9. Mark Goldston, CEO, United Online Inc.
10. Jason Rosenthal, CEO, Ning.com

2) Enterprise & Cloud Computing

1. Padmasree Warrior, CTO, Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO)
2. Bradley Horowitz, VP, Product Management, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Apps
3. Andy Stanford-Clark, IBM Distinguished Engineer, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM)
4. Werner Vogels, CTO, Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN)
5. Amitabh Srivastava, SVP, Server & Cloud Division, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)
6. Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO, Salesforce.com Inc.
7. Simon Crosby, CTO, Citrix Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS)
8. Randi Levin, CTO, City of Los Angeles
9. Andrew Brown, Managing Director, Bank of America
10. Manesh Patel, CIO, Sanmina-SCI Corp. (Nasdaq: SANM)

3) News/Media

1. Rupert Murdoch, CEO, News Corp. (NYSE: NWS)
2. Fiona Spruill, Editor, Web Newsroom, The New York Times
3. Arianna Huffington, Founder, Huffington Post
4. Jim Walton, President, CNN Worldwide (including CNN.com)
5. Matt Drudge, Founder, Drudge Report
6. Michael Arrington, Founder, TechCrunch
7. Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief, Wired
8. Julian Assange, Co-Founder, WikiLeaks
9. Chris Tolles, CEO, Topix
10. Cory Doctorow, Editor, Boing Boing

4) Greentech

1. Steven Chu, US Secretary of Energy, DOE
2. Hal La Flash, Director of Emerging Clean Energy Technologies, PG&E
3. Guido Bartels, Managing Director, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM); Chairman, GridWise Alliance Inc.
4. Elon Musk, Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO, Tesla Motors
5. Chuck Powers, IT strategist, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
6. Paul Maritz, CEO, VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW)
7. Joel Selanikio, software developer
8. Lisa Wood, Executive Director, Institute for Electric Efficiency
9. Andres Carvallo, EVP, Chief Strategy Officer, Grid Net
10. KR Sridhar, Co-Founder & CEO, Bloom Energy Corp.

5) Wireless & Gadgets

1. Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL)
2. Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO, Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK)
3. Kevin Dallas, General Manager, Windows Embedded Business Unit, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)
4. David Yach, CTO, Software, Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; Toronto: RIM)
5. Ivan Seidenberg, Chairman & CEO, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ)
6. Greg Brown, Sanjay Jha, Co-CEOs, Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT)
7. Min Kao, Chairman & CEO, Garmin Ltd. (Nasdaq: GRMN)
8. Jeff Hawkins, Palm Inc.
9. Don Eigler, IBM Fellow, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM)

6) E-Commerce

1. Jeff Bezos, CEO & Chairman, Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN)
2. Pierre Omidyar, Chairman, eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY)
3. Craig Newmark, Founder, craigslist
4. Barry Diller, Chairman, Expedia
5. Scott Thompson, President, PayPal
6. Michael Dell, CEO, Dell Inc. (Nasdaq: DELL)
7. Raul Vazquez, President & CEO, WalMart.com
8. Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO, Yelp Inc.
9. Greg Blatt, CEO, Match.com
10. Joey Levin, CEO, MyFunCards.com (Mindspark Interactive Network)

7) Search

1. Larry Page, Founder, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)
2. Stefan Weitz, Director of Search, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)
3. Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO)
4. Jason Calacanis, Founder, Mahalo.com Inc.
5. Robin Li, originator of Baidu Inc. (Nasdaq: BIDU) search technology
6. Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia
7. Vipul Ved Prakash, Founder, Topsy.com
8. Jack Ma, Founder, Alibaba.com Hong Kong Ltd.
9. Alan Emtage, creator of pre-Web search engine Archie
10. Suranga Chandratillake, CEO, blinkx

8) Security

1. Robert S. Mueller III, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
2. Scott Charney, Corporate VP, Trustworthy Computing, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)
3. Al Zollar, General Manager, IBM Tivoli
4. Whitfield Diffie, cryptography expert
5. Art Coviello, President, RSA Security Inc. (Nasdaq: EMC)
6. Dave Cullinane, Chairman, Cloud Security Alliance; CISO, eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY)
7. Richard Clarke, Chairman, Good Harbor Consulting
8. Jeff Moss, Founder, Black Hat Inc.
9. Jeremiah Grossman, Founder & CTO, WhiteHat Security
10. Bruce Schneier, Blogger

9) Digital Entertainment

1. Eddy Cue, VP, iTunes (Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL))
2. Mitch Bainwol, Chairman, RIAA
3. Jason Kilar, CEO, Hulu LLC
4. Chad Hurley, Founder and CEO, YouTube Inc.
5. Bram Cohen, Founder, BitTorrent Inc.
6. Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix Inc.
7. Rob Pardo, Executive VP, Blizzard Entertainment Inc.
8. Tim Westergren, Founder, Pandora Media Inc.
9. Cédric Tournay, CEO, Dailymotion
10. Leslie Moonves, CEO, CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS)/TV.com

10) Most Over-Rated

1. Evan Williams
2. Biz Stone
3. Sergey Brin
4. Larry Ellison
5. Howard Schmidt
6. Ashton Kutcher
7. Barack Obama
8. Tim Berners-Lee
9. Stephen Saunders
10. Robert Scoble

Filed Under: Social Media

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Bill Hartzer is the CEO of Hartzer Consulting and founder of DNAccess, a domain name protection and recovery service. A recognized authority in digital marketing and domain strategy, Bill is frequently called upon as an Expert Witness in internet-related legal cases. He's been sharing insights and research here on BillHartzer.com for over two decades.

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