Amazon boss tops Vanity Fair's power list

New Delhi: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos leads the pack in Vanity Fair's New Establishment List. He was at fourth position last year. The list aims to chronicle the movers and shakers in popular culture. The top ten leaders who made it to VF's power list include: 1. Jeff Bezos, AmazonAge: 49Last year's ranking: 3Stage of global conquest: The Washington Post now belongs to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The move has caused a flutter in both the old and new media. The soon-to-be-renamed Washington Post Co. is retaining the Kaplan education business, Slate magazine, TheRoot.com and Foreign Policy magazine, as well as the Post's headquarters building in downtown Washington. Bezos' newspaper will lease space in the building. Bezos is buying the newspaper as an individual. Amazon.com Inc. is not involved. New ventures include putting storage lockers in cities to make it easy for customers to pick up their orders, an online auction house, and an ambitious attempt to produce its own TV shows—a direct challenge to Netflix.2. Larry Page & Sergey Brin, GoogleAge: 40, 40Last year's ranking: 2Stage of global conquest: Google's stock price has jumped nearly 20 per cent in value since last year and its annual profits topping $10 billion. The company has decided to spend roughly $1 billion on Waze, a crowd-sourced traffic app; their crazily ambitious Project Loon; and Google Glass, a head-mounted computer that is one of the most talked-about new products in years.3. Tim Cook & Jonathan Ive, AppleAge: 52, 46Last year's ranking: 1Stage of global conquest: It's been two years since the death of Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs. And certainly the tenure of current Apple CEO Tim Cook is full of challenges. The stock price has fallen 35 per cent in the past year. A lot depends on the September's iPhones 5s and 5c sales. However, Apple still sets the standard for innovation and see this as just a warm-up for 2014, when rumor has it that “all the good stuff is coming” out of Ive's vaunted industrial-design workshop. After Apple Maps fiasco, Cook parted ways with Jobs's longtime software deputy, Scott Forstall, and gave the job of software designer Ive.4. Mark Zuckerberg, FacebookAge: 29Last year's Ranking: 4Stage of global conquest: A year after the IPO fiasco, all is well again at Facebook. Although Facebook stock is now finally a few dollars above its IPO price and may climb further, this won't change the problem that ordinary investors missed out on the spectacular growth in the company before it went public. In its most recent quarter, Facebook reported mobile-ad revenue of $656 million, up from roughly zero a year earlier. Advertisers are expected to spend $6 billion on the site in 2013.5. Elon Musk, Tesla Motors, SpacexAge: 42Last year's Ranking: 9STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Musk has navigated Tesla through near bankruptcy in 2008, to new highs. In August, a quarterly earnings report showing a net income of $26 million defied analysts' expectations for the visionary company, whose market value continues to expand. Tesla's stock price has increased ninefold since its 2010 initial public offering, up almost 400 per cent this year alone.6. Lee Kun-hee & Lee Jae-yong, Samsung ElectronicsAge: 71, 45Last year's Ranking: NewSTAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: The father-and-son duo of Lee Kun-hee and Lee Jae-yong has transformed the company to Cupertino's most credible challenger. As of this summer the Korean electronics giant was reportedly selling more of its smartphones than Apple was iPhones, while achieving Apple-like profits. 7. Keith Alexander, National Security AgencyAge: 61Last year's Ranking: NewSTAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: The leaks this summer by former computer-security analyst Edward Snowden suggest that the N.S.A. chief has given his organization access to much of the data running through Silicon Valley's biggest companies, including Facebook, Google, Apple, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Alexander has also reportedly expanded the U.S. military's ability to launch its own cyber-attacks.8. Jack Dorsey, Square, TwitterAge: 36Last year's Ranking: 5Jack Dorsey has finally given up his operational role at Twitter, which he invented and co-founded in 2006, .), to focus on Square, which makes a tiny credit-card reader that turns a smartphone or tablet into a sophisticated cash register. The company already hosts more than three million merchants—including 7,000 Starbucks cafés—and has been expanding into online payments.9. Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz, Andreessen HorowitzAge: 42, 47Last year's Ranking: 6STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Andreessen's star power and Horowitz's reputation as a hands-on operator, along with their venture-capital firm's “Founders First” credo and marketing prowess, have made them a magnet for entrepreneurs. 10. Reid Hoffman & Jeff Weiner, Linkedin/GreylockAge: 46, 43 Last year's Ranking: 10STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: With 225 million members posting their résumés to LinkedIn, the site is pretty much large that every big American company paying to access those résumés. The so-called Facebook for grown-ups has shown healthy profits and quintupled its stock price since its 2011 I.P.O. It's a triumph for Weiner, and has allowed Hoffman to focus on investing and mentoring.