WIRED’s top 100: the top 20

1. JOANNA SHIELDS

VICE PRESIDENT, EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA, FACEBOOK

▲ (LAST YEAR: 31)

Google topped last year’s wired100; this time it’s Facebook. Joanna Shields has worked at both. When Wired spoke to her for last year’s list, the former was the “most inspirational place” she had ever worked. And life at Facebook by comparison?

“I’m definitely at the centre of the universe,” she says now. “I mean, wow. The platform is like nothing built before. It’s awe-inspiring.”

Shields, 49, has a history of joining companies in their growth phase. She joined Bebo as president in January 2007; 16 months later AOL bought the social network for $850 million (£530 million).

She then spent “a tough year” at AOL in New York. “We had a really good plan: what was originally agreed just never happened.”

Shields will not be drawn on Bebo’s valuation; and as for its sale by AOL last June for a reported $10 million, all she will say is: “It wasn’t $10 million. It was hundreds of millions in tax benefits.”

Now, Shields is responsible for Facebook’s revenue growth and profitability in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. She works from the company’s 100-strong office near Carnaby Street in London and is excited about the “merging of the physical world with the digital world” – exemplified in the global launch of Facebook Places.

“It’s an always-on environment; how do you help brands communicate?” she says. “You need to figure how to encourage consumers who love your brand to amplify that message. It’s an entirely new form of marketing – it’s transformational.”

She’s convinced that the network will continue to grow in influence in the UK. “Facebook has 30 million users in Britain, half the population. And more than half of those come back every day,” she says. “The potential for engaging the nation using Facebook is enormous. That’s our future.”

2. James Murdoch

DEPUTY CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, NEWS CORP

▲( 0 4 )

Murdoch is backing digital growth as his father’s heir apparent. His Times/Sunday Times paywall has had limited early subscriber success. But he is an articulate conference spokesman for the experiment.

3. Julian Assange

FOUNDER, WIKILEAKS

(NEW ENTRY)

The Australian-born founder of Wikileaks made headlines not only by releasing classified war logs and secret US embassy cables. He fell out spectacularly with The Guardian and then with Private Eye while appealing extradition to Sweden.

4. Matt Brittin

CHIEF EXECUTIVE, GOOGLE UK

▼( 1 )

The head of Google’s second biggest territory in terms of revenue (£2.15bn in 2010), Brittin led its Getting British Business Online initiative, whose tools help small firms to build websites. Also offline as a J Sainsbury non-exec director.

5. Jeremy Hunt

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR CULTURE, OLYMPICS, MEDIA AND SPORT

▲( 2 6 )

Championed by the coalition as the face of Digital Britain, Hunt proposed a new national TV channel and poured an extra £530 million into “superfast” broadband for UK consumers.

6. Brent Hoberman

COFOUNDER, PROFOUNDERS CAPITAL

▲( 2 8 )

Hoberman is a key mentor to emerging entrepreneurs, both through his European Founders Forum and his PROfounders Capital fund. Chairs or sits on boards of firms such as mydeco, Made.com and TalkTalk.

7. Jonathan ‘Jony’ Ive

SENIOR VP OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN, APPLE

(NEW ENTRY)

Ive’s reputation is flourishing. Media rumours that he might leave Cupertino were denied, but his UK links remain strong, with a recent guest lecture at the Royal College of Art and visits to top UK production facilities.

8. Daniel Ek

CEO, SPOTIFY

▲( 1 0 )

In February, Ek’s London-based startup received a $100 million investment led by DST Global which valued it at $1 billion (£600 million). The music streaming software company recently signed up its millionth paying user – yet it remains locked out of the potentially lucrative US market.

9. Oliver Shusser

DIRECTOR, ITUNES EUROPE

▲( 1 3 )

Schusser manages iTunes’ European content: he controls which music, books, apps and films the continent can access for their iDevices. It’s a powerful job: despite competition, iTunes still controls around two-thirds of the online music market.

10. Hermann Hauser

COFOUNDER AND SENIOR PARTNER, AMADEUS CAPITAL

(NEW ENTRY)

An outspoken supporter of Cambridge’s “Silicon Fen” and an influential investor, Hauser’s report on UK tech policy was partly behind the government’s £200 million fund for Technology and Innovation Centres.

11. Danny Rimer

PARTNER, INDEX VENTURES

▲( 1 4 )

Having invested in UberMedia, the company reported to be acquiring TweetDeck, Rimer has opened a new office in Silicon Valley and provided capital for Stack Exchange to expand. He was previously a director of Last.fm, LOVEFiLM and Skype.

12. Michael Acton Smith

CEO, MIND CANDY

▲( 1 5 )

Moshi Monsters have broken free of their virtual world and become real-life toys, available as key rings, soft toys, stickers and Top Trumps. Smith predicts that they will help his company bag £60 million in online and physical sales this year. Soon to be TV characters too.

13. Stefan Glaenzer

ANGEL INVESTOR; CEO AND FOUNDER, WHITE BEAR YARD

▲( 5 0 )

The White Bear Yard founder and ex-Last.fm investor backs micropayment service Flattr and academic-software platform Mendeley. His Passion Capital recently announced a $60 million (£37 million) fund.

14. Ashley Highfield

MD, MICROSOFT CONSUMER AND ONLINE UK

▼( 9 )

Highfield commands the UK front as Internet Explorer battles Chrome, Bing squares up to Google, and Windows Phone 7 fights for smartphone market share. Kinect’s success boosted Microsoft revenues this year.

15. Warren East

CEO, ARM HOLDINGS

(NEW ENTRY)

Thanks to soaring sales of ARM powered mobile devices (over 90 per cent of smart mobile devices including the iPhone and iPad carry its chips), the Cambridgebased microprocessor supplier has had a huge year. It shipped more than 4.5 billion processors in 2010; the share price tripled.

16. Christian Hernandez Gallardo

HEAD OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, FACEBOOK

(NEW ENTRY)

Seventy per cent of Facebook users are outside the US. Hernandez, formerly of Google, is driving partnerships from London.

17. Reshma Sohoni

PARTNER, SEEDCAMP

▼( 1 2 )

The early-stage-startup investment programme has secured another ¤3 million (£2.6 million) in 2011 and continues to expand its reach. Sohoni’s team was instrumental in achieving the government’s newstartup visa, aimed at enticing foreign entrepreneurs to the UK.

18. Ed Vaizey

CONSERVATIVE MP, TECH CHAMPION

(NEW ENTRY)

Vaizey is jointly in charge of implementing the Digital Economy Act, which makes it easier to penalise copyright infringers. As minister for culture, communications and creative industries, he has controversially championed ISPs’ right to abandon net neutrality.

19. Niklas Zennstrom

PARTNER, ATOMICO

▲( 4 1 )

Rdio, Zennström’s social music service, outran Skype in the race across the Atlantic. His investment fund recently backed style-discovery site Fashiolista to the tune of $500,000 (£307,000), and he’s now investing in Rovio, the developer of Angry Birds.

20. Natalie Massenet

FOUNDER, NET-A-PORTER

▲( 7 2 )

Men have been underserved by fashion e-tail, but Natalie Massenet wants to change that. With the launch of her new site, Mr Porter, in February, Massenet is looking to recreate the success of her female-centred Net-A-Porter – in which Swiss group Richemont bought a majority share last year, valuing it at £350 million and netting Massenet a reported £50 million.“We felt men’s shopping offline and online is a subset of the female shopping experience, and that wasn’t doing justice to men,” she says.

“We thought they deserved their own space.” The site offers high-end clothing with editorial alongside. Style advice (“Can I wear brown shoes in town?”) sits beside interviews with luminaries such as graphic artist Alan Aldridge, and lists of must-buys. “We don’t have those sorts of lists with women,” says Massenet, 46 and based in London. “For a man, there are different categories he tends to buy in – the office, the weekend, sports etc – so we try to tailor for that. The whole thing is combined with content and commerce. We also entertain you, hopefully, and educate you and inspire you like a weekly magazine. But everything is shoppable.” That combination has won her numerous awards, including E-tailer of the Year and an MBE for services to the fashion industry.

Founded 11 years ago in a west London warehouse, Net-A-Porter now has three million users logging on every month from 170 countries and spending an average of £500. The brand launched The Outnet – a fashion website specialising in end-of-line clothing – in April2009. It has built shopping apps for iPad and iPhone, and created four fashion channels streamed through GoogleTV.

So what’s next? “We’re launching Net-A-Porter live. This is a super-exciting development where people can see in real time what other people are buying all over the world.”