Wael Abbas - the first blogger to ever be awarded Journalism's Knight Award by the International Center for Journalists. Abbas, an Egyptian, has brought to light controversial tops of his country's mainstream media and public by blogging on his site hosted by MisrDigital. Picture retrieved from Zimbio.

Heather "Dooce" Armstrong - known as the first ever blogger to be fired from her job after having written about her employment in her personal blog, dooce.com. Armstrong used the word "dooce" several times in her instant messages to her co-workers as a typo for dude, or doooode. According to Urban Dictionary, dooced is a verb, meaning to be fired from one's job for writing in your personal weblog. Picture retrieved from Dooce. 

 Michael Arrington - a corporate attorney, entrepreneur and editor of the influential TechCrunch blog. The site profiles and review Internet entrepreneurs, products and servirces. According to Forbes' Special Report The Web Celeb 25, the mere mention of a company on its pages can make or break a start-up. Named by many a "Silicon Valley Star," Arrington is one of the most influential business writers/bloggers in the world (Forbes, 2008). Picture retrieved from Spock.

Jonathan Dube - wrote the first weblog while chronicling Hurrican Bonnie off the Coast of Carolina for The Charlotte Observer. Picture retrieved from the Online News Association.

James Farmer - Founder and CEO of Edublogs. A blogging website for educators, students, librarians and anyone involved with education. Picture retrieved from Edublogs.

Arianna Huffington - founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post in 2005, a blog site about news and politics. In 2006, Huffington was named to the Time 100, Time Magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people. The Huffington Post helped turn the web into a marketable tool open for development and use. Picture retrieved from PersonArte.

 Mario Lavadeira - better known as Perez Hilton, the controversial celebrity gossip blogger was ranked No. 1 in Forbes' Special Report, The Web Celeb 25, in March 2008. Lavadeira is feared by many celebrities due to his uncouth scribbling on paparazzi photos which are posted on his blog. According to The New York Times, by mid 2007, PerezHilton.com was receiving 1.7 million unique visitors in the United States and 2.6 million worldwide on a monthly basis. Picture retrieved from Time.

Joshua Micah Marshall - creator of Talking Points Memo, became the first Internet-only news outfit to be awarded the George Polk Award for Journalism. Marshall covered the firing of eight United States attorneys in his blog. His unrelenting research and posts are believed to have led to the resignation of the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. Picture retrieved from the Observer.

Peter Merholz - of peterme.com created the word blog as the short term for the word weblog in 1999. Picture retrieved from Coroflot.

Jeff Patterson - lead developer of many educational software programs, including the Gaggle Network, an email and blogging website where teachers can create safe, language and image filtering accounts for their students. Picture retrieved from TechLearning.

David Warlick - founder of The Land Mark Project, one of the earliest educational websites on the Internet. Landmarks has served teachers since 1995 with links to teaching and learning resources on the Net and valuable Web toolscreator such as Class Blogmeister, a blogging website for educators that servers more than 100,000 users. Picture retrieved from http://davidwarlick.com/wordpress/?page_id=2.