The 50 Who Matter Now

In our second annual ranking, Business 2.0 has compiled an unabashedly subjective list of people, products, trends, and ideas that are transforming the world of business.

Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom
Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom
Co-founders, Skype and Joost

Rank: 27

Why they matter: Call them the Disruptive Duo. First they undermined the music industry by unleashing the Kazaa file-sharing network. Then they rattled the telephone industry by creating Skype, a free Internet phone network.

Now Friis and Zennstrom are ready to reinvent the TV industry with Joost, a full-screen, peer-to-peer TV network that you can watch on your laptop. With 150 channels available and more on the way, Joost is the anti-YouTube: All the video, from anime to CSI, is created by entertainment pros. More than 500,000 beta users signed up before Joost even opened its doors to the general public, and big-name advertisers -- Coca-Cola, Nike, Sony -- are lining up to become sponsors. TV may never be the same.

Adelson

Calacanis

Bianchini

Iacobucci, Raburn

Graham

You

Williams

Musk

Melton

O'Reilly

Edmond

Zell

Huffington

Fake Steve Jobs

Walsh

Draft

Zuckerberg

Branson

Nooyi

Ambani bros.

Phillips

Negroponte

Hundt

Friis, Zennstrom

Cogan

Rosedale

Fadell

Kao

Arrington

Stephenson

Miyamoto

Eberhard

Agile software

Li

Diller

Chizen

Hurd

Wales

Bezos

McAndrews

Watanabe

Chambers

Schwarzenegger

Decker

Murdoch

Jacobs

Moritz

Private equity

Jobs

Google trio
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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.