A decade ago the Internet focused on bringing the world's information to our fingertips. Today the emergence of Web 2.0 services such as social networking, user-generated content and broadband video are putting the user at the center of the online universe.

Entrepreneurs have been empowered, too, by open-source software, outsourcing and other developments that make it cheaper and easier to launch a technology startup than ever before. Web 2.0 companies are harnessing these technologies to help people adapt the Internet to their individual preferences. The force of that idea is drawing investors eager to cash in on what is the biggest shift in how Internet users engage with the medium since the emergence of e-commerce.

Following are five Web 2.0 pioneers, all under 40, who collectively are changing that critical relationship. Each a serial entrepreneur, their companies are magnets for venture capital and are good bets to end up as initial public offerings or trade sales.

Kevin Rose
founder and chief architect, Digg Inc.
co-founder, Revision3 Corp.
co-founder, Pownce

Although Kevin Rose's first taste of minor celebrity came when he was a correspondent on a cable-TV show with a small, but devoted, audience, the 29-year-old college dropout's fame has soared over the past few years. Today he is the quintessential Web 2.0 entrepreneur, even boasting a BusinessWeek cover story with the catchy -- though some argue inflated -- headline "How This Kid Made $60 Million in 18 Months."

Rose's talent doesn't lie in inventing new technologies but rather in bringing them together in useful ways. Digg Inc., his first startup, combines social bookmarking, blogging, really simple syndication, or RSS, and user-generated content to invite visitors to rank the day's top news stories and comment on them. Revision3 Corp., Rose's online video endeavor, is reminiscent of his broadcast alma mater, TechTV, only it's on the Internet instead of cable. Pownce, launched in June, is a cross between instant messaging, blogging and workgroup collaboration, borrowing ideas from Twitter and others.

Digg and Revision3 have together garnered about $20 million in venture capital, and investors are clamoring to put money into Pownce. Despite such interest, Rose is leery of bringing on investors too early or selling his companies outright.

"I've had several friends who have had their companies acquired by larger organizations, and for us, as long as we can continue to keep building the product and hiring the employees we want to hire, we like being independent," he says.

Rose only brought Greylock Partners and Omidyar Network into Digg and Revision3 when he could no longer pay for the servers necessary to keep up with growth. He reports that his success with Digg and Revision3 has made his "pain threshold a little higher" for Pownce.

Daniel Klaus
co-founder and CEO
Music Nation Inc.

While other executives bemoan the seismic shifts in the recording industry, Daniel Klaus is molding the new turf. Capitalizing on social networking and online video -- as well as the popularity of reality-TV talent shows, especially "American Idol," that let the audience pick the winners -- Klaus is replacing highly paid talent scouts with fans who work for free.

Visitors to Music Nation Inc.'s Web site, launched last year, vote on their favorite garage bands, based on homemade videos provided by the rock-star wannabes. Winners take home recording contracts with Original Signal Recordings, a joint venture with Epic Records, as well as access to first-class producers and engineers.

"This is the next-generation A&R [Artists and Repertoire] vehicle," says Klaus. "Instead of spending $500,000 to develop an album, we spend tens of thousands to develop digital singles."

The strategy is to develop 10 to 15 bands a year and nurture them over time while gradually building a fan base.

Investors and others like what they hear. Music Nation has attracted former DoubleClick Inc. CEO Kevin Ryan as its chairman, and the company has raised $5.5 million from Greylock Partners and Point Judith Capital. Music Nation isn't Klaus' first startup. Eschewing college, at 18 he launched a Canadian record label called Passion Music Group, which was sold to BMG Music in 1998 for an undisclosed sum.

Chris Yeh
CEO
Ustream.tv Inc.

Remember the 1998 film "The Truman Show," in which Jim Carrey's character unwittingly stars in a real-time documentary of his life? Now you can choose to do the same thing with so-called lifecasting through Ustream.tv, a platform for streaming continual live video.

Ustream.tv Inc. isn't the only company to embrace the idea. Other companies that have formed around the phenomenon include Justin.tv Inc., but 32-year-old Chris Yeh brings business sense to the genre, which others so far have not.

Yeh started his first company at Harvard University and helped found TargetOnline, a bubble-era Internet marketing company. He also drew a paycheck from financial boutique D.E. Shaw & Co. LP, working with companies going online in the early days of the Web. His experience helping startups at D.E. Shaw piqued his interest in creating companies. He was an early investor in Ustream.tv and in April took over the role of CEO.

Yeh believes that the 2008 presidential race will drive a new measure of interactivity to the Web through lifecasting. Already, many of the presidential hopefuls have used the platform. He likens the role of lifecasting today to blogs in the 2004 presidential election and YouTube during the 2006 congressional race.

"Our vision here is that live video is very different than recorded because of the interactivity that live enables," Yeh says. "Unlike watching something on TV, when you're watching Ustream, you're participating in something."

If the history of Web 2.0 deals is any indication -- with online video leader YouTube Inc. going to Google Inc. for $1.6 billion (the search giant also bought Pyra Labs, the creator of Blogger), and "blogware" developer Six Apart Ltd. snaring the creator of LiveJournal -- lifecasting has potential to spawn its own dealmaking.

Ramu Yalamanchi
founder and CEO
hi5 Networks Inc.

Ramu Yalamanchi looks beyond borders when it comes to creating a business. As the CEO and founder of hi5 Networks Inc., a social network that has 50 million members and the dominant market share in Latin America, the 32-year-old Indiana University grad decided from the outset that he wanted to go international. That decision has made hi5, which is profitable, stand out from the mob of other social networking startups. "The U.S. has 170 million users online, and the growth is almost flat," Yalamanchi says. "But I thought, wait a second, there's a lot more people outside the U.S., and broadband is growing there. What has happened in the U.S. with the Web isn't true of just this market. It's a worldwide trend."

Hi5 is capitalizing on that trend with a $20 million round led by Mohr Davidow Ventures. The money will go toward expanding into other countries, where Yalamanchi can envision buying already popular sites. For now, he's looking at advertising and content deals. But in the long run, of course, he's got his eye on the public markets.

Di-Ann Eisnor
co-founder and CEO
Platial Inc.

All politics is local and now, thanks to Platial Inc., all maps may be too. In a marriage of mapmaking and social networking, the company invites users to customize maps, inserting local points of interest, comments and even photographs and then share them through social networks. For example, if a friend is visiting your city, you could share a map you've customized with your favorite restaurants and recommendations of your favorite dishes.

A sense of the importance of locale led 35-year-old Di-Ann Eisnor to create Platial, which grew out of a project at an earlier startup.

"This is definitely more exciting and has more potential than our previous startups," which were service companies, she says. "We're able to have a greater impact fairly early on. We already have 5 million unique users, and you'd never have that kind of reach when starting a services company." The downside of that influence is that it often brings big competitors, and Eisnor is up against the biggest -- Google Inc. has launched a similar product called MyMaps.

Prior to that product launch, Platial raised an undisclosed angel and institutional round from some of Google's previous investors. In 2005, Platial scored funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and eBay Inc. founder Pierre Omidyar's fund, and in February Platial raised an additional $2.4 million from the same investors.

Eisnor sold her first company to Omnicom Group in 2000 and her second in a small deal to Ketchum Inc. for an undisclosed sum. Both were funded by revenue generated from projects -- a cautious way of building a business. These days, Eisnor's hooked on creating a product and having the resources to get big quickly.-- Stacey Higginbotham

Five tech entrepreneurs to watch
Entrepreneur	Mission	Rank	Street cred	Trivia
Kevin Rose	Letting users take control of content	Founder: Digg, Revision3, Pownce	Raised $11.3M for Digg, $9M for Revision3; former anchor TechTV	If the Internet stuff doesn't work out, he wants to be a nutritionist
Ramu Yalamanchi	Creating an international social network	CEO, founder: Hi5	Started Ad Knowledge Inc., sold to CMGI in 1999 for $193M	Hi5 began as a South Asian matchmaking site
Christopher Yeh	Delivering reality TV online	CEO: Ustream.tv	Built TargetFirst Inc.; raised $5.5 million	He has a creative writing degree from Stanford
Di-Ann Eisnor	Putting whatever you want on the map	CEO, co-founder: Platial	Sold first company Eisnor Interactive to Omnicom Group for undisclosed sum in 2000	She met her husband at her first startup
Daniel Klaus	Turning the audience into a giant talent scout	CEO, co-founder: Music Nation	Sold first company Passion Music Group to BMG for undisclosed sum in 1998	In grade school he wore a suit and charged kids to play with the blocks
Source: Tech Confidential & The Deal