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

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

Comments

This change comes as part of the new privacy migration tool, where users get to update their privacy settings as Facebook moves to improved privacy settings. (Or was that improved publicity settings?) It looks like this is the change promised in July to appease the Canadian government’s privacy complaints.

Facebook, it seems, is now jealous of today’s social media sweetheart: Twitter. The theory goes that FB wants people to select the “Everyone” option so that status updates, especially, will be publicly shared, and Facebook will be like Twitter, only better. (Note that, above, the “Everyone” option is only preselected for a few settings, other defaults include “Friends” and “Friends of Friends.”)

At Facebook’s blog post, people are already complaining about the loss of privacy and such features as the ability to hide wall posts, profile pictures and friend lists. (I can’t vouch for these, but several people are complaining about them.)

Users will be prompted to update their settings and are free to return to their old settings or customize the settings however they want. Yeah, it’s not cool that Facebook goes and selects “Everyone” as the default, but if they’re prompting their users to update their settings themselves, and not changing anything until the users approve it, then . . . is this really that big of a deal? What do you think?

Comments

The report is based on the findings of a daily tracking survey on Americans’ use of the Internet. The results are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research International between March 26 to April 19, 2009, among a sample of 2,253 adults, 18 and older.

Now for some numbers:

• The number of people using video sharing sites has gone from 33% in 2006 to 62% in 2009
• 89 percent of internet users ages 18-29 now say they watch content on video sharing sites, and 36 percent do so on a typical day
• 46 percent of adult internet users are active on social networking sites, which makes the 62% number for video more impressive. How the research defines social networking sites of course impacts this because YouTube can be clumped in there quite readily.
• Evidence of some possible alternative definitions of social networking sites can be found by the statement that 11 percent use status updating sites like Twitter. Normally Twitter is part of social networking but to have it peeled off under the category of “status updating” site is kind of odd. What’s Facebook then a “What’s on your mind?” site vs. a social networking site?

As with any research we need to take it with a grain of salt. Online video consumption will need to be watched based on age more than any other measurement. The 30 and under (specifically 18-29 years old) set registers an 89% of Internet users having used a video sharing site and 36% doing so daily. My response is for these folks to maybe exercise their bodies as well as their eyes but that’s just me.

So what are your video habits? Do you have to see the latest stupid human trick on YouTube or else your day is not complete? Do you turn to video for product information regularly? While it’s interesting to know the total numbers what is more informative is the specific types of video consumed on these sites and how Internet marketers can take advantage of these habits. Tell us your deepest, darkest online video habits but please keep it in the realm of ‘family viewing’. No one really wants to know everything you watch online .

Comments

The social networking site wants MySpace Celebrity to be a popular online destination for celebrities to communicate directly with their fans in the MySpace community. The site has 300 official celebrity MySpace profiles on the new channel, including actors, musicians, athletes, comedians and socialites.

"MySpace Celebrity is Hollywood’s new home page. Celebrities have been using MySpace since the site’s launch and it’s a natural extension for us to now offer them an aggregated channel where they can be in control of their own image," said MySpace President and Co-Founder Tom Anderson.

"We want MySpace users to connect with celebrities in the same way that they do with musicians."

Some of the features on the channel include celebrity news from People.com and celebrity photos from Getty Images. Celebrities that are involved with the channel include Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Alba, Elijah Wood and Zach Braff.

MySpace Celebrity will also feature a variety of original celebrity content including Rising Star, Celebrity Blog, and Featured Icon, where celebrities can talk about current projects and share photos and blogs.

While there is no shortage of entertainment news sites out there, with 300 celebrities signed on to the MySpace Celebrity channel it will at least have a shot at success.