The E's Have It
May 11 2000
They're rich, they're well known and they're definitely influential. They're Business Week's e.biz 25, a collection of the "most influential people in electronic business." Announced in the e.biz supplement to this week's issue, they range from the ubiquitous Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com to the more obscure Mohanbir Sawhney of Northwestern University.
It's not in-depth reporting or analysis - read the rest of the supplement for that - but it is fun, especially when compared against the magazine's 1999 e.biz 25. Gone are the e-retailers of last year, such as Webvan.com or Priceline.com. In their place are - you guessed it - b-to-b companies, such as i2 Technologies and CommerceOne. In fact, notes managing editor Kathy Rebello, last year only one of the 25 was with a b-to-b company.
Another sign that times have changed: '99 influencer Kevin O'Connor of DoubleClick is gone, replaced by Marc Rotenberg, whose Electronic Privacy Information Center pressured DoubleClick to drop its plans to sell data harvested from unwitting Web surfers. And while the number of women on last year's list dropped from four to two, the influencers feature seven non-white faces, compared to last year's two.
A half-dozen luminaries from '99 were repeat winners: Bezos, Steve Case of AOL, John Chambers of Cisco, e-Bay's Meg Whitman, Masayoshi Son of Softbank and Yahoo's Tim Koogle. It will be interesting to see who gets dropped next year . Or will we even have to wait that long? The 1999 e.biz 25 were announced last September, a mere eight months ago. But that's almost an eternity in e-commerce.
Vanity Fair also gets in on the e-celebrity thing with "The e-Establishment 50: The Kings and Queens of eCommerce, eMedia, eEntertainment, eEverything" in its May issue. It's a slick, quick photo-and-mini-bio collection of big shots from Chase H&Q's Dan Case to Robert Young of Red Hat. But it's difficult to say what exactly landed these folks on the list. Age? Market value of company? Personal stake in company? No real context is provided to these stats, which accompany each listee. A note from editor Graydon Carter at the front of the magazine unhelpfully says that these 50 are the "junior varsity team" of the magazine's annual New Establishment listing "with a couple of extra zeros added onto everyone's net worth."
The e.biz 25: Masters of the Web Worl http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_20/b3681001.htm
Up and Comer http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_20/b3681001.htm
The e-Establishment 50: The Kings and Queens of eCommerce, eMedia, eEntertainment, eEverythin Vanity Fair, May 200 Not available online.