Once again, Vanity Fair leaves geeks at the kids' power table

Owen Thomas — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Preeminent among the magazine world's kingmaking power lists is Vanity Fair's New Establishment, which appears in the October issue — on newsstands in L.A. and New York today, but not in the Bay Area for another six days. Silicon Valley gets similar short shrift: The names who make it there are predictable bigs like Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison, or Hollywood-crossover types like Jeff Skoll, eBay's first employee turned movie producer. Walt Mossberg, now employed by New Establishment perennial Rupert Murdoch, also squeaked in. The consolation prize Vanity Fair offers: Its "Next Establishment" list, reserved for the likes of Twitter's Ev Williams. It's a marvelous piece of New York media trickery — flatter the geeks by making them feel included, but corral them into a side room so the real power brokers aren't offended by comparison. True, the "Next Establishment" suggests that these are people who might matter in the future. But in saying that, Vanity Fair's editors are also sending the message that right here, right now, its "Next" nominees are nobodies. On this year's list:

Wendi Deng Murdoch, MySpace China
Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, MySpace
Max Levchin, Slide
Robin Li, Baidu
Markos Moulitsas, DailyKos
Elon Musk, SpaceX
Ali and Hadi Partovi, iLike
Mika Salmi, MTV
Dmitry Shapiro, Veoh
Quincy Smith, CBS
Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times
Peter Thiel, Clarium Capital
Evan Williams, Twitter
Andrew Zolli, PopTech

Free music paves Google's way into China

Mary Jane Irwin — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:40:19 EST

When Eric Schmidt looks at Baidu, he doesn't see a China-grown website that accounts for 61 percent of search traffic because of its ease of use and mastery of the native tongue, as Baidu founder Robin Li claims. Instead, Schmidt sees a search engine beating the poo out of Google China because of its ease of use in downloading MP3s. (Nearly 100 percent of digital music downloads in China are unlicensed.) Schmidt's response?

Offer free, licensed music downloads to all of China. It is, in some ways, a brilliant move. In the U.S., when Google paid to license the music in uploaded videos, it raised the financial bar beyond what most YouTube's rivals could afford. It now hopes to beggar Baidu by forcing it to pay up, too — and the music industry is on its side. In Baidu's favor, however, is consumer indifference. In a country where you can buy bootlegs for pocket change, sanctioned MP3s are unlikely to be much of a draw. (Photo by Romain Guy)

Gawker: valleywag, robin li

Once again, Vanity Fair leaves geeks at the kids' power table

Free music paves Google's way into China