Forbes profiles seven “masters of information” and writes in its introduction:
Every era has its prized commodity, cherished for its value and utility–gold in the 1850s, oil in the 1870s, water out West in the 1940s.
Ours is data.
But a mountain of raw data is as useless as one of unmined gold. The biggest Internet fortunes are being made by those who have figured out how to sift out only the data they need. Some are retailers wanting to snag customers, some marketers looking for telling patterns, some consumers looking to buy the right gizmo or just build on what they know.
They are:
Barry Diller: The dealmaking chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp concentrates on the Webs sweet spots.
Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield: The shutterbugs behind Flickr are making searching for images a snap.
Jeffery Jonas: The wizard behind IBM Entity Analytics finds non-obvious connections.
John Markus Lervik: The co-founder of Fast Search & Transfer is focused on high-speed corporate searching.
Ellen Siminoff: Efficient Frontiers queen of the keyword calculates what that online ad is really worth.
Peter Norvig: Googles director of search quality and research adds speed and relevance to the worlds best search engine.
Jimmy Wales: The founder of the nonprofit Wikipedia is committed to answering the worlds questions for free.
