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Net Gains (Oct 16, 98) |
Note: All external links mentioned in this article were working when published, but some may no longer be active.
Cyberspace hotshots
The cover of last week's issue of Time Magazine proudly announced
the 50 most important people in cyberspace. Their definition of
cyberspace was very loose and covered everything electronic. But
we Net fanatics who vociferously guard Net related terms know
that cyberspace means the Internet. Taking the Time list, and
separating the chaff from the wheat leaves us with just a dozen
authentic Internet personalities - the rest lie in some twilight
zone where telecommunication, electronics and computers coexist.
Presenting the dozen really, really important people in cyberspace…
- Number 3 on Time is Steven Case, chairman and CEO, AOL, an online service with over 14.5 million subscribers. For those of you who haven't heard of AOL, well consider this - if you think what VSNL offers you is plain cake, AOL is a delicious black forest cake. And yet, VSNL and AOL have one thing in common - people just love to hate it !
- Number 6 is Jerry Yang, but don't let that funny name fool you - as the co-founder of Internet's largest brand Yahoo!, his net worth is US$905 million. Boohoo! To think that a hobby he started 5 years ago by listing his favourite websites is the most visited site on the Net today… And Jerry's just 29 years young!
- At number 15 is another name that everyone refers to in the same breath as Internet success stories - Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon.com - the world's largest bookstore. The best part is that this bookstore does not have a shopfront in real life - it exists only on the Internet, and offers an amazing variety of books and an even better experience for book lovers. Not to mention the huge discounts on their books …
- Following immediately after is David Bohnett - founder and chairman, Geocities - the world's largest homepage community, with over 2 million users around the world. Wouldn't mind being in his shoes, considering that his 1997 pay packet was roundabout Rs. 68 lakhs…
- Halfway down Time's list is Jay Walker - founder of Priceline.com - an innovative Internet concept. Priceline.com, is an online auction house launched in April that allows airline ticket buyers to name the price they're willing to pay for a ticket and gives it to them more often than not. The site handled US$10 million in transactions in the first three months! They're now using the same model for cars and hotel reservations too. See, the buyer can be king too.
- Jake Winebaum, president, Disney Online, heads the company's vast online kingdom, which includes the Net's No. 1 kids' site, Disney.com; Starwave, creator of the hugely popular ESPN Sportszone site; and e-commerce star shop.com. By the end of this year, his company will have the No. 3 reach on the Web, behind Yahoo! and America Online.
- Yunjie Liu is not a name you'd expect to find in the Top 50 list, but as the founder of Chinanet in 93, he became the father of the Internet in China, and is sitting pretty at the 28th rank.
- President and CEO, E*Trade Securities, Christos Cotsakos does to brokering what the Net is doing to many businesses - getting rid of the middleman. If this was the US, and you were playing with stocks and bonds, his site would help you with low-cost stock trades and a wealth of information.
- Humour is big business on the Internet, and that's what put Scott Dikkers, editor in chief, the Onion in the 43rd slot on the list. Need a laugh? You can ROTFL (Roll On The Floor Laughing) when you log onto theonion.com
- Another Chinese, Charles Zhang, is the founder and chief executive, Internet Technologies China. The company's claim to fame (and money) is Sohoo - China's most popular search engine and Web destination.
- Kevin O'Conner, CEO, DoubleClick Inc. is almost at the bottom of the list, ranked as 47th. Using cookies that we talked about a fortnight ago, Kevin's company delivers a well-targeted audience to advertising clients. What he gets in return is a hefty pay packet - almost Rs. 75 lakhs in 1997!
- Last on our list, but 48th on Time's list is Alan Ramadan, chairman and CEO, Quokka Sports, which along with Intel and Compaq, produces round-the-clock, interactive sporting-events coverage on the Internet.
Funny - even after going through the article with a magnifying
glass, I couldn't find traces of an Indian name in that list -
let's hope 1999 changes that ! TIME will tell…
Back to Net Gains 1998 archives.
© Lyndon Cerejo:
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