Business 2.0 Magazine's People Who Do & Don't Matter Lists

June 21, 2006 7:43 PM

50 People Who Matter Now or 10 people Who Don't Matter.
posted by JPowers (49 comments total)

"1 You! The consumer as creator"
- kinda like God :)
posted by RufusW at 7:47 PM on June 21, 2006

Does Linus Torvalds really look like that?
posted by Mid at 7:52 PM on June 21, 2006

He looks fine here.
posted by Mid at 7:54 PM on June 21, 2006

Yes, he does.
posted by cellphone at 7:54 PM on June 21, 2006

From the Facebook summary

"Last spring, Facebook reportedly turned down a $750 million buyout offer, holding out instead for as much as $2 billion. "

I just had to give a sigh to that one.

Also, where is the guy from ESPN Mobile? Or is he on the "10 people who nobody even cares about enough to put in a list"?
posted by Hypharse at 7:54 PM on June 21, 2006

Also, it's about time ol' fugly, Slashdot, was dethroned.
posted by cellphone at 7:55 PM on June 21, 2006

From the "10 People Who Don't Matter" list:
Jeffrey Citron
Chairman and chief strategist, Vonage

Does that mean I should stay away from Vonage? Are their days numbered?
posted by NoMich at 7:55 PM on June 21, 2006

Hang on..there's a "Business 2.0" magazine?

*involuntary spazm*
posted by Jimbob at 8:00 PM on June 21, 2006

Also, it's about time ol' fugly, Slashdot, was dethroned.

Oh, but they just did a user based redesign. It's even uglier, now.
posted by loquacious at 8:00 PM on June 21, 2006

Since I'm not on the "10 people who don't matter" list, I must matter to someone.

That's cool.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:03 PM on June 21, 2006

The 10 People that don't Matter list is missing the staff of Business 2.0
posted by C.Batt at 8:04 PM on June 21, 2006

Also, it's about time ol' fugly, Slashdot, was dethroned.

Oh, but they just did a user based redesign. It's even uglier, now.
posted by loquacious at 10:00 PM CST on June 21 [+fave] [!]

Agreed. It went from notably ugly to completely bland. Now it just looks like your third-rate Digg knockoff, except without the simplicity.
posted by cellphone at 8:09 PM on June 21, 2006

"1 You! The consumer as creator"

When I deal with my credit card company or my bank or Apple tech support, I feel less like creator and more like an insignificant blip.
posted by Juggermatt at 8:15 PM on June 21, 2006

I am content knowing that the only person I could even slightly care about got the number one slot.
posted by Serial Killer Slumber Party at 8:16 PM on June 21, 2006

I would find Slashdot more relevent if it updated more. My ADD needs 100 updates an hour like Digg.com.
posted by Juggermatt at 8:17 PM on June 21, 2006

They're wrong about Zuckerburg not mattering. Facebook will obliterate MySpace. It may take a decade, though.
posted by danb at 8:22 PM on June 21, 2006

When I deal with my credit card company or my bank or Apple tech support, I feel less like creator and more like an insignificant blip.
posted by Juggermatt at 10:15 PM CST on June 21 [+fave] [!]

If you think that's defeating, think about the fact that the sun is about 24691358024691358024691358024.69 times bigger than you! (based on a sun mass of 2 x 10^30 kg and a personal mass of 81kg, rounded from a conversion of 180lbs to kg)
posted by cellphone at 8:24 PM on June 21, 2006

Are you saying I'm fat?
posted by TonyRobots at 8:30 PM on June 21, 2006

Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake
Co-founders, Flickr

Highest ranking on one of these mover and shaker lists ever by people who were once probably active members of this site? You know, from when all those a-list mattbuddy types used to hang around here. Inspiration to go see what people are doing over at Projects. They seemed to come up with Flickr after it seemed for awhile that all the juice for people doing cool things had been squeezed out of the web.
posted by TimTypeZed at 8:43 PM on June 21, 2006

(Unless, of course, some 13 year old has already appeared on all the really prestigous lists.)
posted by TimTypeZed at 8:51 PM on June 21, 2006

"You!" If you're gonna kiss my ass you better get some tongue action going on.
posted by nyxxxx at 8:51 PM on June 21, 2006

I made the post announcing Flickr to metafilter. The mefi responsive was a collective "Pepsiblue!" and "meh".
posted by vacapinta at 9:00 PM on June 21, 2006

What if I'm not on either list?
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:14 PM on June 21, 2006

I'm pretty sure that their take on Facebook is short-sighted. It's as if someone at the peak of Friendster looked at Myspace and said, "why would that ever catch on?"
posted by drezdn at 9:29 PM on June 21, 2006

Business 2.0 doesn't matter.
posted by moonbiter at 9:29 PM on June 21, 2006

bwahahahaha

Rob Malda of slashdot is on the list of 10 people to ignore. Fucking sweet.
posted by delmoi at 9:30 PM on June 21, 2006

Slashdot sucks for so many reasons. They had a huge pool of smart, talented people reading the site and they basically ignored every suggestion and offer for help, whatever, in order to keep what was basically really lazy control. It was rediculous. And dispite what the article actually says, The slashdot crew are not good editors at all.
posted by delmoi at 9:34 PM on June 21, 2006

hm, I had to google Friendster to remember what it was exactly. Those social networking sites are a dime a dozen.
posted by puke & cry at 9:34 PM on June 21, 2006 [1 favorite]

But there's also something to be said for knowing when to take the money and run. Last spring, Facebook reportedly turned down a $750 million buyout offer, holding out instead for as much as $2 billion.

Meh, there's also something to be said for not selling out. But myspace was crap from the git-go. Myspace is basically run by technical morons.
posted by delmoi at 9:36 PM on June 21, 2006

I made the post announcing Flickr to metafilter. The mefi responsive was a collective "Pepsiblue!" and "meh".
posted by vacapinta at 9:00 PM PST on June 21 [+fave] [!]

That Flickr announcement thread is f'n hilarious. Especially this comment:

Arto - it is only photos right now because we only got started on it in December. Flash can handle a lot of media types, streamed and otherwise. And we have plans. (A dream app inside of Flickr (for me) would be a real-time multi-user step sequencer, sort of like a stripped down Garage Band, but with lots of people using it).

I'm STILL waiting for the Flickr step sequencer.
posted by unSane at 9:44 PM on June 21, 2006

I made the post announcing Flickr to metafilter. The mefi responsive was a collective "Pepsiblue!" and "meh".

Then Yahoo! bought it and folded it into their "Hot thing to send to the conferences because god knows we need SOMETHING to send" since everything else they had on hand wouldn't get the attention of a dead weasel.

I'm still shocked Yahoo! didn't buy MySpace since they are both advocates of the "ugly as a shit" web design philosophy.
posted by smallerdemon at 9:45 PM on June 21, 2006

I'm still shocked Yahoo! didn't buy MySpace since they are both advocates of the "ugly as a shit" web design philosophy.

Hahaha.
posted by delmoi at 9:48 PM on June 21, 2006

pah, flickr isn't even yahoo's most popular photo sharing site.
posted by winjer at 11:31 PM on June 21, 2006

If slashdot lost its smart people, where did they go? The comments at digg are (mostly) stupid.
posted by Tlogmer at 11:37 PM on June 21, 2006

Slashdot makes me a little queasy. The whole idea of a ratings system for comments is just dorky beyond words. You're into rating peoples' comments? Really? Do you rate your phone calls, too? What about conversations you have with your friends?

The whole idea of rating human interaction is just kinda gross to me. On top of that, their rating system is completely arbitrary, and controlled by some self-selecting elite cadre.

They sometimes have interesting articles, and are worth an occasional skim, but as a community, they completely suck it.
posted by Afroblanco at 12:17 AM on June 22, 2006

I know what your saying, but it's not really a rating system as much as a way of filtering out the crap - which is necessary but doesn't really work. You can set your filter really high, and only get the "+5" comments, but by doing that you lose the rest of the conversation and the context. I always thought the "meta-moderation" they do on Slashdot was a neat idea - asking you to judge how appropriate various ratings were, although I'm not sure if it's actually produced a concrete improvement in the site. I also like the idea of offering moderation randomly, rather than constantly. But there are two ways this can go:

(a) Oh joy! I'm a mod for this thread. Now I will proudly go about, performing my service to the community, dousing trolls and rewarding knowledge.
(b) Oh joy! Now's my chance to mod down all the people I don't like!
posted by Jimbob at 12:29 AM on June 22, 2006

Yeah, there's still a place for a well-edited site. Slashdot's not well moderated at all, though. Duplicate stories, inaccurate story descriptions, bizarre choices for what is and is not a good story, lots of typos, and stories that are clearly plants by other sites make for a bad site. And does anyone remember that Jon Katz guy that used to write stories for them? Everyone hated him, but the guys in charge of /. must've loved him, 'cause no one could persuade them to get rid of him. Metamoderation sometimes works, but more often encourages people to toe the party line in order to curry favor. I'm tempted to post this story to Slashdot :)
posted by unreason at 4:18 AM on June 22, 2006

Slashdot decreed, awhile back, that they absolutely refused to do any kind of spellchecking, because it would, get this, make the site feel too professional.

That's right. One of Rob Malda's big fears is that Slashdot will become too polished.

I think he doesn't realize that his core audience grew up.
posted by Malor at 4:23 AM on June 22, 2006

And does anyone remember that Jon Katz guy that used to write stories for them?

You meant to type:

"And does~? anyone remember~? that Jon Katz guy#
that used~? to write stories for them?"

Having contributed to HotWired and Salon, you'd think he'd have submitted his pieces in a format that would render properly online. Or that Malda and the "editors" would care enough to make the necessary corrections.
posted by Smart Dalek at 5:40 AM on June 22, 2006

Rated: (+1: Meta)
posted by Plutor at 5:45 AM on June 22, 2006

Slashdot sucks for so many reasons. They had a huge pool of smart, talented people reading the site and they basically ignored every suggestion and offer for help, whatever, in order to keep what was basically really lazy control. It was rediculous. And dispite what the article actually says, The slashdot crew are not good editors at all.

man, this so reminds me of some other site. i'm just kind of blanking on which. help me out here.
posted by 3.2.3 at 7:31 AM on June 22, 2006

I must be the only person at MeFi who doesn't adore Flickr. Well, I love the idea, I just do not like the execution. I find it terribly non-intuitive to use. Not difficult, mind you, but non-intuitive.

Maybe I'm getting old? Have I lost my innate user interface ability? Will I be completely lost when it comes time for the 3D hologram interface?

The #1 thing that annoys me is that clicking on the picture for a collection/slide show does not take me to the collection/slide show, it takes me to THAT picture.

Grrr.
posted by Ynoxas at 7:36 AM on June 22, 2006

I think they're off on Facebook - it targets a different demographic from MySpace (college students vs teens/tweens), and nobody seems particularly clear on how to monetise the MySpace/YouTube demog.

Being an "80-million-user gorilla" doesn't count for much if your core users are cash-poor, time-rich children, attracted to your gaudy site like magpies to a discarded scrap of foil...
posted by runkelfinker at 8:00 AM on June 22, 2006

Ynoxas writes "I must be the only person at MeFi who doesn't adore Flickr."

Nope. I don't hate it, but I don't like it either. Other people do, so it's fine by me, and I'm happy they're happy with it, but I certainly don't adore it.
posted by Bugbread at 8:28 AM on June 22, 2006

Flickr is a great site, but for a "web 2.0 site," their interface is amazingly clunky. I'm surprised they've gotten away with it for this long.
posted by Afroblanco at 8:30 AM on June 22, 2006

This guy must not spend much time on college campuses. At Wash U, at least, everyone is on Facebook. I'm not exaggerating--I don't know a single person here who isn't.

And MySpace sucks.
posted by obvious at 10:17 AM on June 22, 2006

I made the post announcing Flickr to metafilter. The mefi responsive was a collective "Pepsiblue!" and "meh".

We're not nearly as hip as reputed.
posted by sonofsamiam at 10:21 AM on June 22, 2006

We're not nearly as hip as reputed.

Calcium deficiency can do that. That's why I invested in this here miniature crossbow to keep the damn kids off my lawn.

I actually counted more pro-Flickr posts in the announcement thread than anti. Considering the Crusty Curmudgeon Quotient on MeFi, that's doing pretty good.
posted by Sparx at 2:32 PM on June 22, 2006

The whole idea of a ratings system for comments is just dorky beyond words.

Yeah. Dodged a bullet on that one.
posted by cortex at 8:47 PM on June 22, 2006