Facebook’s 26-Year-Old CEO Named Most Influential Leader

After all, he did invent “poking”.  Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has taken the top spot in Vanity Fair‘s 16th annual list of the 100 most influential people of the Information Age. Apple CEO Steve Jobs and the leadership team at Google were ranked second and third respectively. Earlier this year, the 26-year-old Facebook founder, anointed by the magazine as “our new Caesar,” was argued to be more powerful than the Leader of the Free World.


Vanity Fair writes:

The wildly popular social-networking Web site, valued at around $25 billion, added its 500-millionth member this summer, and those “friends” share more than 30 billion pieces of information a month. Facebook runs more banner advertisements than any other Web site (176 billion a quarter) and drives more U.S. visitor traffic to some sites than even Google. Revenues this year could reach $2 billion.

2010 has been a particularly memorable year for Zuckerberg and Facebook. Last month, the social network surpassed 500 million registered users. The dramatic story of the company’s creation will also be brought to the big screen this October with David Fincher’s film, “The Social Network,” starring Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake.

Women accounted for thirteen of the list’s top spots, the highest being singer and most followed Twitter user, Lady Gaga. Other women include HBO’s Sue Naegle (33rd), Oprah (34th), Facebook C.O.O. Sheryl Sandberg (37th), Diane von Furstenberg (40th, with husband Barry Diller), Arianna Huffington (42nd), Mad Men costume designer and set decorator Janie Bryant and Amy Wells (43rd, with show creator Matthew Weiner), Gretchen Morgenson (54th), Muiccia Prada (56th), Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts (61st, with designer Christopher Bailey), Angelina Jolie (75th, with partner Brad Pitt), Google’s Marissa Mayer (80th) and Deadline Hollywood’s Nikki Finke (93rd).

This year’s Top 10 most influential leaders are as follows:

1. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
2. Steve Jobs, Apple
3. Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Google
4. Rupert Murdoch, News Corp.
5. Jeff Bezos, Amazon
6. Bernard Arnault, LVMH
7. Michael Bloomberg, Bloomberg L.P.
8. Larry Ellison, Oracle
9. Evan Williams, Biz Stone, Twitter
10. John Malone, Liberty Media