Top 50 Silicon Valley Influencers: Foremski at 28 Beats Tim O'Reilly and Top Journalists

By Tom Foremski - July 30, 2008

NowPublic - "Crowd Powered Media" - revealed its list of 50 influential individuals in Silicon Valley/San Francisco. I got in at number 28, above Tim O'Reilly, the very influential Sebastapol based publisher of books for geeks. Number one is Robert Scoble followed by Mike Arrington.

Foremski's Take:

The list is interesting and there are many similar lists out there, with almost the same names but in different orders. I don't think it is possible to create an ultimate "influencer" list because the order of the names is different in different communities. I would trade my position for a higher spot in a smaller community such as VCs, or financial analysts. That would be much more valuable. Because the game is not about numbers of eyeballs it is about who's eyeballs.

Advertisers still buy media based on aggregate numbers but the real opportunity is to buy the right numbers. There is a potentially very lucrative arbitrage opportunity here.

- - -

I'm always flattered to be included but I take these lists with a large pinch of salt and I suggest you do too. Here is NowPublic's list of top 50 influencers (my bold):

1 Robert Scoble

2 Michael Arrington

3 Jack Dorsey

4 Biz Stone

5 Matt Cutts

6 Pete Cashmore

7 Dave Winer

8 Guy Kawasaki

9 Loïc Le Meur

10 Kevin Rose

11 Merlin Mann

12 Stowe Boyd

13 Jeff Atwood

14 Jeremiah Owyang

15 Veronica Belmont

16 Kara Swisher

17 Scott Beale

18 Marc Andreessen

19 Ryan Block

20 David Sifry

21 Emily Chang

22 Om Malik

23 Timothy Ferriss

24 Nick Douglas

25 John Battelle

26 David Cohn

27 Louis Gray

28 Tom Foremski

29 Tim O'Reilly

30 Ariel Waldman

31 Matt Mullenweg

32 Dean Takahashi

33 Philip Kaplan

34 JD Lasica

35 Sarah Lacy

36 Brian Solis

37 Charlene Li

38 Rafe Needleman

39 Dan Farber

40 Howard Rheingold

41 David McClure

42 Margaret Mason

43 Jason Goldman

44 Leah Culver

45 Chris Shipley

46 Jackson West

47 Liz Gannes

48 Owen Thomas

49 Adeo Ressi

50 Max Levchin

The Most Public Index, Silicon Valley | The News is NowPublic.com


                   

July 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comment | Category: About SVW | Subscribe to SVW

Comments (3)

Bill Flitter:

Tom, congrats! What is your definition of an "influencer?" We talk a lot about influencers and the need for Marketers to reach the influencers.

Convince an agency to buy "influence." They will ask how many impressions per influence. So, yes. Advertisers still buy media based on aggregate numbers. The ROI metric to measure marketing impact on influence is not there (yet) so agencies cannot sell it.

And what do you mean, "Advertisers still buy media based on aggregate numbers but the real opportunity is to buy the right numbers. There is a potentially very lucrative arbitrage opportunity here."

Cheers,


Tom Foremski:

Bill: What defines an "influencer" is not up to me to define. I think the rule of thumb is that you, personally, know who is influential in your world. Everyone has their own top 50 which can't be defined by anyone else.

Influence isn't measured by any outside metric except your own. The only people who ask for an outside metric are the ones that don't know their space.

So if media buyers, for example, are judging influence on what is measurable by links, comments, or pageviews, they don't know who is influential in their market--they aren't involved enough in their target markets to know--yet they should.

That's why there is a potentially lucrative arbitrage opportunity here that can exploit this knowledge gap, that can target the influencers without the need for a third-party list, imho.


Quant Jock:

This list has nothing to do with influence but attention. There are many people who I know who are influential.

The best influencials are the one's who are invisible.

Half those guys are idiots on the list. Tom: I wouldn't be proud to be on that list.


Post a comment