Co-founder, Huffington PostRank: 38Why she matters: In the year of the blogger, Huffington is the queen of the blogosphere. Her Huffington Post, launched just two years ago to snooty derision, has become one of the Web's most influential political sites, attracting more than 800,000 unique visitors a month. A $5 million round of VC funding has given Huffington the heft to add more original reporting, investigative pieces, and videos to a site already brimming with A-list opinion makers.
HuffPo is the new model for Internet-bred news sites -- a hybrid that combines the journalistic traditions of print with the immediacy and community of the Web. She also plans to launch a satirical site called 23/6 later this year. This time, nobody's laughing.
Meet 50 Who Matter winner Gina Bianchini. Her site, Ning, lets anyone be a social networking mogul. (more) 
