The 50 most important people on the web

Thanks to Jim Symcox of Acorn Service who has had a good spot with PC World's 50 most important people connected with the Internet (as reported on Yahoo).

The usual suspects are there: Steve Jobs, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, World Wide Web Consortium and Jerry Yang, David Filo and Terry Semel of Yahoo. Bill Gates is not.

Pleasing to see Craig Newmark founder of Craigslist and Jimmy Wales founder of Wikipedia in there although no big surpise.

There is the odd, no corporate and surprising entry: Tila Tequila, a MySpace celebrity who has had her profile viewed more than 1.5 million times. She has enjoyed some celebrity away from the online world generated by her My Space activities. A career originating from being a MySpace celebrity!

A really brilliant entry is Mohammed and Omar Fadhil who blog from Baghdad at Iraq the model. This gives a real on the ground insight into the political situation in Iraq. Very well written for a non English native speaker, it is also well read if the large number of comments is anything to go by. Highly influential!

The last two entries show the power of social media. Influence is now being shared rather than being owned by a few media moguls. There is an alternative although traditional media and social media will exist side by side. After all did the catalogue displace the high street as predicted in the 20s? Did the PC displace paper? No.

It has shifted the balance of power though.

Long live the social media revolution!