Quite Different from Playboy and almost as Suprising

Another list I'm on today: NowPublic's tally of the Web's 50 Most Influential People in Silicon Valley. I'm a respectable #35. Thanks for the props guys!

But more to the point: It struck me how few "traditional" journalists are on this list. I can count them on one hand. Obviously, a group focused on "crowd powered media" is probably going to weigh things differently than if, say, a consortium of newspapers was coming up with it. Still, it pretty much sums up the two sides of the media business right now: There's a ton of pain on the traditional print side as people still grapple with the best ways to be relevant online BUT if you embrace it, iterate, experiment there's a ton of opportunity amid the chaos.

I know I wrote something critical this morning about the blog-induced 20-second hype cycle, but all things considered, I think it's a great sign of the media industry's health that so many new voices-- and new types of voices-- have become so relevant and influential so fast.

Although, as I was discussing this with my BW editor Tom Giles today, (Sorry! You didn't say off the record! ;) ) he noted that individual brands are very hard to sustain, not to mention scale. After all few of us have the energy of Robert Scoble, who may secretly have clones or twins running around with all that video equipment. Tom is right. That's why I try to have the best of both worlds: I work for myself, but heavily contract out to two strong brands in Yahoo and BusinessWeek. We'll see how long I can stay relevant!