The top tech newsmaker? Not whom you might think

The overwhelming winner was Jenni Ringley, of Jennicam fame, who garnered 51 percent of the votes cast. Jenni made news by putting her life, or at least her apartment, on the World Wide Web (she also linked to our Newsmaker poll from her site). Before long the mainstream media jumped on the story, showering her with the requisite dollop of Warholian celebrity. [Editor's note: Due to a technical error, voting continued after the poll was officially closed. This story is based on the voting as of the time the poll was supposed to close. Readers will note discrepancies between this story and the final poll.]

Picking Jenni as newsmaker of the year is not so far-fetched as, say, Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf, who won People' Magazine's Most Beautiful Person online poll. The Jennicam brings together many of the elements that define the Web. This is a grass-roots medium -- sometimes turning into a national town hall -- where the world can literally beat a path to your door if you build a better mouse-trap (several people cast their votes in favor of Ana Voog, creator of ana.com, arguing that her site-as-life is better than Jennicam). And it was a year in which the Web became a much more mainstream medium. A vote for Jenni could, in fact, reflect a vote for the new cyber order, the wresting of control away from the conventional forces of big business and, increasingly, big media.

The voting for the second place finisher could also be interpreted as a vote for a new way of doing things. Linus Torvalds, who created the Linux operating system, was named by some 24 percent of voters. Linux, a strain of Unix that is maintained and expanded by a group of passionate volunteers, is making its way into large corporations. It's free (there are commercial versions of it), and the so-called "open source code" movement has won big-name converts. Netscape opened its source code in 1998, and Microsoft said it would look into opening up part of its Windows 2000 code. Sun made similar noises late in the year about Java. Of course, Linux.org's site linked to the poll in an attempt to drive up his vote count, but could not catch Jenni.

In what seems to be a theme, the Number 3 vote getter is also someone with a reputation for challenging the established order: Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Computer Inc. Jobs, who years ago spearheaded the notion of the Mac as the computer for the rest of us and now wants us to Think Different, is widely credited with turning Apple around, and driving the development of the iMac, the company's most successful product in years.

Of course, Jobs and Torvald benefit from having an active, well-organized group of online supporters, and Jenni Ringley's only purview is online. You could make a strong case that the results simply reflect which tech folks are the most popular with Netizens.

Nonetheless, the onslaught of the Web as a medium appeared to impress voters in ZDNN's poll. The release of the Starr Report online, and other stories related to the ongoing saga of President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, drove huge amounts of Internet traffic. That troika drew fourth place, with 6 percent of voters, and the record-setting Web stream of John Glenn's return to space ended up in sixth place.

Sandwiched in between these two events was Bill Gates, the embattled head of Microsoft Corp. Gates drew 5 percent of the votes cast in a year when his company had another busy year -- inside and outside the courtroom. During the course of 1998, Microsoft released Windows 98, made numerous investments in cable and other communications technology, solidified its presence as an e-commerce player, and bought WebTV. And of course it got sued multiple times, most notably by the U.S. Department of Justice for anticompetitive behavior.

Amazon.com's stock made an amazing run as the phenom accounted for one sixth of the books sold in the U.S. All the while, it continued to foil longer established rivals, most notably Barnes and Noble, whose barnesandnoble.com Web site had a scattershot debut. So Jeff Bezos' position in 7th is no surprise.

One of the major stories of the year was the transition of search engines into so-called portal sites. Yahoo!, Lycos, Infoseek, Excite and the rest of their ilk scrambled to transform themselves into the online equivalent of TV networks. Investors bought into the argument and Wall Street rewarded them with stratospheric stock multiples. Jerry Yang, the company's Chief Yahoo!, took 8th place in our poll.

Lurking in the background of the business was Steve Case, head of America Online, a man who may indeed be the most influential person in cyberspace. AOL's membership surpassed 14 million, easily making it the largest Internet service provider in the market. AOL also stunned the online world when it bought faltering Netscape in a $4.2 billion stunner of a deal.. But Case's relatively low profile may explain his 9th place finish in the poll.

There was a virtual tie for 10th, as the late Net pioneer Jon Postel and Michael Dell, head of red-hot Dell Computer Corp., were neck and neck. Postel helped broker the government's hand-off of its stewardship of the Web. Dell's most visible move this year was in market share, where the company passed Compaq for first place in the U.S. market. Dell was also a big booster of e-commerce, touting the huge growth in Internet-purchasing that Dell experienced (though lumped in with those purchases were customers who shopped online but bought by phone).

Ana Voog was mentioned as the leading recipient of write-in votes. She edged out Net gossip-monger Matt Drudge and Jesse Ventura, whose surprising victory in the Minnesota gubernatorial race was credited in part to his campaign's effective use of the Internet.