Top 25 most influential internet people

BusinessWeek has published a list of the people its staff consider to be the most influential in the online world. Most of the people are self-selecting – the Google gang, the two Steves (Jobs at Apple and Ballmer at Microsoft), plus representatives from Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Facebook, Amazon and Digg – but a few are more offbeat:

Jonathan Kaplan, chief executive of Pure Digital Technologies, is selected following the success of the company’s Flip camcorder, an ultra-simple device designed to make home moviemaking fun and faff-free.

Maria Thomas, of etsy.com, heads up the arts and craft site that “last year sold $27 million with very little marketing,” according to BusinessWeek.

Also of interest is the inclusion of two figure more usually associated with old media. Jon Stewart, of the Daily Show, gets in because Comedy Central “finally started putting all its shows up for free on its own Web site and allowing people to share”, while Rupert Murdoch makes it thanks to his stewardship of MySpace, part of the News Corp empire (along with Times Online).

Ah, our old friend convergence...