10 ppl who changed d internet

When you turn on your modem or connect to a Wi-Fi access, you are already online which allows access to the Internet. I previously wrote a post about this at 10 Young People Who Changed the Internet. However, I have to admit that I made lots of mistakes in that post, and this post is to make up for it. So, here goes:

1. Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google Inc.)

Perhaps two of the brightest and outstanding billionaires out there, Sergey Brin and Larry Page are one of the world’s most successful Internet entrepreneur/developer ever in history. As the owners of popular web search engine, Google, these two Ph.Ds from Stanford University started in their friend’s garage in Menlo Park, California. Google was first launched on Stanford’s website (google.stanford.edu) and then finally on Google.com as soon as they registered the domain name in 1997. Thus, Google is born and worth at about a staggering $25 billion dollars.

2. Sir Tim Berners-Lee (Created World Wide Web)

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, an Englishman whom the English will be proud of. He is a developer who invented the World Wide Web. Sir Tim Berners-Lee is also the founder of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology which comprises of companies that are willing to create standards and improvements of the Web.

3. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

One of the most admired and successful youngster of this century, this 24 years old Harvard graduate is the world’s youngest billionaire. He founded the online social networking website, Facebook, which has poised threats to leading social networking site, MySpace and has collapsed other smaller sites. Zuckerberg launched TheFacebook (FaceMatch) from his Harvard dorm room in 2004 and started promoting it to all Ivy League schools and some Boston institutions. Soon, he bought over Facebook.com domain name. However, few of his old Harvard friends claimed they hired Zuckerberg to write codes for their website, ConnectU which has the same functions with Facebook. As there are no contracts or whatsoever, the lawsuit was dismissed in 2007. Mark Zuckerberg has an approximate net worth of $1.5 billion dollars.

4. Shawn Fanning (Napster, Rupture)

Inventor of Napster, the first popular peer-to-peer file sharing platform. Shawn Fanning, a computer programmer, developed Napster when he was still pursuing his studies in Northeastern University, Boston. However, due to several lawsuits by music industry-backed sectors, Napster has then become property of Roxio Inc. In December 2006, Fanning developed Rupture, a social networking tool that facilitates profiles and communications of online gamers in World of Warcraft.

5. Kevin Rose (Digg)

Perhaps one of the most respected, Internet idealist and TV show host, Kevin Rose is definitely placed a huge impacts among all Digg users, and his TV shows fans. He used to co-host G4TV’s The Screen Savers (which later renamed to Attack of the Show) and then, left the network in 2005. He also co-founded Pownce and Revision3 besides his popular Digg.com, social-bookmarking website. He created Digg in 2004 by hiring a freelance programmer who Kevin Rose paid $12 per hour through eLance. Kevin Rose later bought Digg.com domain name for $1,200 and then went on to buy larger server space. Digg received an ultra boost of capitals when they received $2.8 million of venture capital from Omidyar Network, Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen and Greylock Partners.

6. Matt Mullenweg (WordPress)

This blog might not even exist if Matt Mullenweg did not invented WordPress, an open-source blogging software. He also founded Automattic, the business behind WordPress as well as famous spam fighter, Akismet. At the age of 24, this young developer quit his job at CNET to fully focus on developing WordPress’ blogging platform. He firstly invented the core of WordPress ath the age of 19 and as WordPress matures, many bloggers are leaving other blogging platforms to use WordPress.

7. Bram Cohen (BitTorrent)

Bram Cohen is best known as the developer, co-founder and author behind peer-to-peer BitTorrent protocol and its file sharing program. He is also the co-founder of CodeCon and co-author of Codeville. In 2001, he quits his job at MojoNation to work in BitTorrent. He firstly revealed his ideas in a CodeCon conference and started luring beta testers by collecting free pornography. He then spent some time working with Valve, but quits his job later to work in BitTorrent Inc.with his brother and business partner.

8. Pierre Omidyar (eBay)

Pierre Omidyar is the founder of eBay, an online auctioning marketplace that connects buyers and sellers. With a net worth of about $7.7 billion dollars, Omidyar and his wife Pam, are one of those entrepreneurs that go beyonds doing profits, which is by contributing to non-profits organizations and aiding start-ups. He wrote the source code of eBay when he was 28 years old in 1995. Initially, he decided to name his auction site after his consulting firm, Echo Bay but echobay.com was not available. To save up his Internet service provider cost, he registered eBay.com.

9. Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia)

Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, the online open-content encyclopedia which is founded in 2001. He is also the co-founder of Wikia, a privately own web hosting company set up in 2004. Jimmy Wales firstly started a peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopedia which is Nupedia. He then, utilized the ideas of Nupedia with his “wiki” software to form today’s Wikipedia.

10. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen (YouTube)

Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are the founders of super popular online video streaming and sharing website, YouTube. Chad Hurley used to work for eBay’s PayPal in the designing department where he designed PayPal’s logo. Together with PayPal colleagues, Jared Karim and Steve Chen, they founded YouTube in 2005. Google later acquires YouTube at $1.65 billion dollars. Chad Hurley was 28 years old and Steve Chen was 27 years old when they founded YouTube.