Dallas Web Site Design

5 Social Media Superstars

September 11th, 2007

Social media websites are the latest rage in the internet world. Users can get together and create any number of things, good music lists, a great collection of news stories or keep in touch with friends. With all the buzz about these new and exciting opportunities on social websites, certain figures are beginning to standout as the “media elite” of the next generation. There are definite figures that standout from others. So to keep things straight about who’s who in silicon valley we assembled a list of the top 5 social media stars.

#5

Steve Huffman & Alexis Ohanian – Reddit

The owners of Reddit are relative ghosts in the Silicon Valley scene. For some reason they don’t have many photo ops or any sort of public presence. These self confessed internet surfing info junkies found themselves with too many tabs open each morning when they would browse. The solution, an information/news aggregator that would have all their information right there on one page; Reddit was born. Steve and Alexis are in a position where they can continue to work on the website without putting a large emphasis on profits, therefore we can all continue to enjoy this great free site or as Alexis puts it “an endangered species”.

#4

Kevin Rose – Digg

Kevin Rose is well known both in the business world and the bay area social superstar world. Kevin is often seen at clubs, parties and promotions, and why not? With a net worth of around 60 million, Kevin must enjoying life. In 2006 Rose was featured on the cover of Business Week with the title “How this kid mad $60 million in 18 months”. While the article didn’t go over swimmingly with internet superstar Kevin rose, that set a precedent for his success and fame. Digg hasn’t struck it rich but they have created a loyal user base and are continuously pushing out new site developments like Digg Spy, Digg Labs and Digg Swarm. While there is always a lot of drama and controversy at Diggs house, they are likely to see sustainability in their traffic and will have lots of advertising revenues in the future.

#3-2

Garett Camp & Geoff Smith – Stumble Upon

Garett Camp and Geoff smith have become the fastest growing superstars of the social world, when StumbleUpon took off in 2006 with around 1 million visitors. Today StumbleUpon boasts around 3 million visitors, a 2 million jump in less than a year. EBay purchased StumbleUpon in May of 2007 for a nice sum of $75 million dollars. Garret and Geoff are no doubt living it up Castro with the acquisition of StumbleUpon but they are going to stay on and continue to improve the site.

#1

Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg gets our vote as the number one social media star. The average college geek turned Silicon Valley superstar, it’s the northern Californian Cinderella story. Mark created Facebook as a student directory for Harvard where he was attending school at the time. Originally there was no student directory whatsoever, so naturally Mark offered to create one for the school. But due to bureaucracy and difficult staff members mark was not allowed to create it. So Mark hacked into Harvard’s system and created an aggregate website called Facemash that compared various undergrads in a “hot or not” fashion. Eventually this site became Facebook.

With Myspace popularity is dying down, no social website has grown so quick or as large as Facebook. This Palo Alto based social website has made huge strides in user volume and development. Right now Yahoo is offering Mark Zuckerberg around 1 billion dollars for the website, making Mark Zuckerberg out number on Social media star.

Entry Filed under: Social Media