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.

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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