Coincidence? Most Of Business Insider Silicon Alley 100 List Ranked Alphabetically
Today, Business Insider released it’s Silicon Alley Insider 100, which lists “the people that did the coolest stuff In New York tech this year.” The “SAI 100” — as the kids call it — has become an annual rite of Fall for the dozens of Internet users who pay attention to the New York tech scene, and is being fêted with a party this evening on the floor of the New York stock exchange. One particularly astute observer of the list, though, pointed out that ordinal ranking of NY tech people seems to line up very similar to their alphabetic listings as well.
Update: The introduction of the BI post states that the slides are listed at random, and not ranked in order of power and influence. But it seems odd that numbers nearly the entire list is listed alphabetical save numbers 1 through 14…and Arianna Huffington just randomly was listed at #1, followed by the heaviest hitters of the NY Tech scene. Until you get to number 15.
Don’t get us wrong, Business Insider is enjoying a lovely moment in their four-year existence, and they should receive some well deserved accolades for growing their business (and traffic) in a remarkably volatile time. Having reportedly just raised $7 Million in a recent round of financing, founder Henry Blodget made his triumphant return to Wall St. this morning.
Make no mistake, we are big fans of the Internet™ here at Mediaite, and have been since it was invented in March of 2007 (or so). As such, we are prime targets for these sorts of link-friendly slide shows. A wise man once wrote: The “presentation” format is an extremely effective and efficient way to convey information. Mediaite has, on occasion, used the same format ourselves.
But when listing, by influence and power, the most important people in a certain industry, it seems a little odd when the vast majority just so happens to be listed alphabetically. Numbers 15 through 93, specifically, seem to have been data sorted on a spread sheet, in alphabetical order. Yes, there are some outliers, but we choose to see them as exceptions that prove the rule. We are also big fans of Business Insider, who had the great judgment to hire one of Mediate’s first editors, Glynnis MacNicol, but if Mediaite had published a ranking that seemed to be so…well, alphabetical, we’d expect to be called out (with love) by Business Insider.
We have published a big chunk of the list here, if only to explain why our eyebrows are raised. Less we get criticized for irresponsibly over-aggregating from Business Insider, we’ve left out numbers 1 through 14, which you can go see for yourself!
15. Alexis Tryon and Scott Carleton
16. Andrew Ferenchi
17. Andrew Siegel
18. Dan Shanoff
19. Ari Jacoby
20. Arshad Chowdhury
21. Austin Chang and Alex Chung
22. Arthur Sulzberger and David Perpich
23. Greg Blatt and Barry Diller
24. Barry Silbert
25. Ben McKean and Dan Leahy
26. Bill Wise and JT Batson
27. Bob Pittman
28. Brad Hargreaves and Matt Brimer
29. Bre Pettis
30. Brian O’Kelley and Michael Rubenstein
31. Brooke Hammerling
32. Carter Cleveland
33. Chad Dickerson
34. Chris Coyne , Sam Yagan, and Max Krohn
35. Cyrus Massoumi
36. Darren Herman
37. Dave Hendricks
38. David Bloom and Felix Sheng
39. David Cohen and David Tisch
40. David Karp and John Maloney
41. Marissa Campise and David Pakman
42. David Rosenblatt
43. David Gilboa, Neil Blumenthal, Andrew Hunt and Jeffrey Raider
44. Derek Handley
45. Eli Portnoy
46. Eric Alterman
47. Eric Hippeau
48. Fred Seibert, Jed Simmons, Timothy Shey
49. Fred Wilson, Albert Wenger, and Brad Burnha
50. Gal Trifon
51. George Kliavkoff
52. Glenn Beck, Christopher Balfe, Betsy Morgan, Joel Cheatwood
53. Greg Clayman and Jesse Angelo
54. Greg Coleman
55. Jason Baptiste
56. Jason Glickman
57. Jayant Kulkarni and Adam Regelmann
58. Joel Spolsky
59. Joe Apprendi
60. Joe Essenfeld
61. Joe Zawadzki
62. John Borthwick
63. John Laramie and John Warrum
64. Jonathan Hefter
65. Jonathan Zabusky
66. Josh Kushner
67. Katia Beauchamp and Hayley Barna
68. Ken and Ben Lerer
69. George Lee
70. Marty Moe and Josh Topolsky
71. Matt Meeker
72. Matthew Shampine, Jesse Middleton, and Adam Neumann
73. Michael Karnjanaprakorn and Malcolm Ong
74. Irving Fain, Michael Montero,and Josh Bowen
75. Mike Duda
76. Mike Lazerow
77. Neil Capel and Ian White
78. Nikhil Seth
79. Oren Netzer
80. Ori Allon
81. Perry Chen
82. Philip James and Kevin Fortuna
83. Reece Pacheco
84. Richard Fernandes
85. Roger Ehrenberg
86. Sam Lessin
87. Scott Kurnit
88. Seth Goldstein and Billy Chasen
89. Seth Pinsky
90. Stuart Ellman and Jim Robinson IV
91. Kevin Ryan, Susan Lyne, Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, Alexis Maybank
92. Tim and Nina Zagat
93. Vinicius Vacanti and Jim Moran
94. Vivek Sharma and Michael Nutt
95. Wiley Cerilli and Kenny Herman
96. Zephrin Lasker
97. Warren Webster and Brian Farnham
98. Erick Schonfeld
99. Tina Brown and Stephen Colvin
100. Choire Sicha, Alex Balk, and David Cho (now departed)
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
