People seem to always be in the lookout for a pecking order. Some through rankings, some through awards. Certainly they are on the lookout for the influential. This year's TIME 100 was no different, with 100 people chosen who were deemed most influential by the TIME judges.
Interestingly, there were four people honored from the online world:
- (24) Steve Jobs of Apple for the iPhone
- (46) Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook
- (66) Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch
- (86) Jay Adelson of Digg
TIME does not rank the 100, but for fun, Joel Stein came up with a formula to put the recipients in order of most influence. And as a nod to him and his sense of fun, I put this year's recipients from the Internet famous crowd in the order that was determined by his oddball mathmatical formula.
The truth is that while the online world continues to grow in influence, they appropriately only represent 4 percent of the total TIME 100 list. Somehow in the echo chamber this very influential corner of the world seems much more important than it actually is. Still, I am happy to see that the mainstream part of society is recognizing that there are changes underderfoot that will transform parts of society, even if society has no idea why it was changed.
The TIME 100 Gala: Everyone Loves a Party
Of course, no award would be complete without a gala and last week, while I was schlepping boxes into my new home, movie stars, world leaders, humanitarian workers, media types and a small cadre of the Blogerati and Internet famous were fetted at the TIME 100 Gala held at the Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center at the Time Warner Center in NYC.
Past recipient Craig Newmark of Craig's List (2005) posted this photo of (l to r) Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia (TIME 100 2006), Mike Arrington (TIME 100 2008), Newmark and Chris DeWolfe of MySpace (TIME 100 2008 finalist).
Newmark took a great picture of my good friend and talented writer Andrea Weckerle with her boyfriend Jimmy Wales, but I regret that you can't see her beautiful sage gown that falls in pleats to the floor. Good choice Andrea.
Newmark also took a photo of the Papparatzi taking pictures of him. Very funny.
If you want more coverage of the Time 100 Gala, Gawker carried some interesting Tweets (ala Twitter) from attendees at the gala, Mediabistro did a series of articles and the New York Observer had some insider dish, including that Sam Zell ate a big bite of Arianna Huffington's dessert.
