11. The Communicator: Loic Le Meur
Leweb3.com
seesmic.com
Le Meur is a compulsive communicator. And that has served him well. He has run a string of startups, founded a popular conference in Paris called Le Web that brings together bloggers from around the world, and started one of the most popular blogs in France. Right now, few people are more rabid about the possibilities of Twitter and its short burst of communications than Le Meur. He parlayed that obsession into a startup, Seesmic, a sort of video version of Twitter, where people can post short videos and react to each other's clips. But mostly, it's Le Meur's irrepressible enthusiasm for all things Internet that has made him someone to watch.
12. The Trader: Jack Ma
alibaba.com
For many Chinese entrepreneurs, Ma is a hero. A former school teacher, Ma, 43, is the founder and CEO of the Alibaba Group, China's premier e-commerce player. The company, headquartered in Ma's hometown, the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, controls Yahoo China and Taobao, the country's top consumer Web site. The flagship of the group is Alibaba.com, a business-to-business service that connects small and midsized importers and exporters in China with counterparts worldwide. Ma successfully guided Alibaba's $1.5 billion Hong Kong initial private offering last November and is now using that cash pile to expand into new markets in Japan, India, and Korea.
13. The Publisher: Matt Mullenweg
Wordpress.org
As the importance of social media expands, so does the influence of WordPress, the blogging service that most serious bloggers turn to. And though blogging might seem well established, WordPress just keeps on growing. Open source software is part of the reason for WordPress' success. When Mullenweg started blogging in 2001, he used open source software to develop his own Web tools, which became WordPress. Traffic to WordPress' service more than doubled during the last year to 103 million global visitors, compared with main rival Typepad's 20 million.
14. The Mogul: Rupert Murdoch
myspace.com
Murdoch made his career—and billions—developing media properties into powerhouses. He's aiming to do it again with MySpace, the social network he bought in 2005 for a mere $580 million. Under the ownership of News Corp. (NWS), MySpace has morphed from a site where users post messages to friends and listen to unsigned bands into a full-fledged Web portal for entertainment content that pulls in an estimated $800 million per year in revenue. The site, which has more than 117 million users worldwide, has signed deals to distribute television shows and original programming and, this September, launched MySpace Music—a joint venture with the four major record labels and Indie players. Now Murdoch's challenge is to turn all the traffic and premium content into ad buys capable of competing with the likes of Yahoo.
15. The Community Organizer: Craig Newmark
craigslist.comThe former Charles Schwab Internet consultant started Craigslist in 2004 to help people connect and publicize events. The site has since dramatically altered the classified advertising universe and the business model of local newspapers with its largely free want ads and "for sale" postings. But don't ask Newmark how much the site is capable of raking in. Newmark insists that he's not in it for the money and, after a company employee sold a 25% stake to eBay, has filed suit over what he describes as the e-commerce giant's relentless attempts to turn the site into an eBay business.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario