The hypothetical wormhole to this absurdly ambitious goal? The wish list.

Wish co-founders Peter Szulczewski and Danny Zhang

The startup is called ContextLogic, and it’s got some of tech’s most smartypants investors behind it, as well as 10 million people already signed up for its wish-list service, called Wish.com.

“We want to be Google AdWords for the retailer,” explained co-founder and CEO Peter Szulczewski, an engineer who previously worked on ad algorithms and search at Google for five years.

Users sign up for Wish to make wish lists. They save, tag and recommend products to each other (and, by default, it’s social-spammy, with automatic posts to your Facebook profile and rewards for inviting friends). Then the company matches participating merchants with potential customers, and sends out discounts for specific products.

So, basically, it’s like personalized coupons.

The target retailer for Wish is an Amazon Marketplace merchant who wants to get more distribution without paying Amazon a significant portion of each transaction. To that end, Wish plans to launch self-serve tools for retailers next month, Szulczewski said. Eventually, it wants to get more closely involved with transactions by offering checkout tools.

The 20-person, San Francisco-based ContextLogic has raised $8 million in funding, led by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale’s Formation 8, with former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, Factual’s Gil Elbaz, Sling co-founder Blake Krikorian, Lady Gaga’s manager Troy Carter, Steve Chen of YouTube and Aydin Senkut of Felicis Ventures and others participating.

Because the Wish experience is all about tastemaking and discovery, “We’re creating hundreds of Fab.coms in different verticals,” said co-founder Danny Zhang, who previously worked on the Overture team at Yahoo.

Wish users have saved 100 million products, and recommend 100,000 of them per day, according to internal data.

There are many other wish-list products out there; for instance, Amazon and Pinterest. Zhang and Szulczewski say Wish’s advantage is that the wish list is pretty, it’s tightly and smartly integrated with an advertising platform and, most of all, it’s constantly being optimized.

Plus, Wish is especially sticky on mobile. Via iPhone, Android and iPad apps, engagement and sales are double what they are on the Web, the company said.

Iovine is the studio engineer turned producer turned label executive turned headphone impressario, and he’s worked with everyone from Bruce Springsteen to U2 to Eminem to Lady Gaga. Current titles: Chairman, Interscope Records, and co-founder, Beats By Dre.

Those credentials alone would make him a fascinating interview, but now he has added another line to his resume: He’s trying to create a digital music subscription service with mass market appeal.

Lots of folks have tried this, but only Spotify seems to have had some success so far. Iovine thinks he can do much better, with a secret sauce that has something to do with a lot of curation and hand-holding.

That kind of confidence in your own taste-making ability runs counter to a lot of today’s digital ethos, which holds that people will figure out what they want to hear (or watch, or whatever) on their own, or with the help of friends, or with code. And Iovine thinks that’s bunk. So this should be a fun conversation!

And we’ll have a bunch of them next month. Here’s the lineup of speakers for Dive, which we’re holding Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-President Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (and guests), New Republic owner Chris Hughes, USA Today publisher Larry Kramer, Dish Network founder Charlie Ergen, and Microsoft Xbox executives Yusuf Mehdi and Nancy Tellem.

Want to join them? Head here, and we’ll see you soon.

Following the hundreds of thousands of Twitter users who added a green overlay to their profile pictures to indicate their support for Iranian protesters in 2009 — and later campaigns like “I’m With Coco” and STOP SOPA — Gilbert designed a tool called “when things fall apart” to help Twitter users support the Red Cross.

After users donate $10 to the Red Cross and authenticate with Twitter, the when things fall apart app breaks up their Twitter profile pics into tiny virtual pieces. Updating every 12 hours over the course of three days, the picture eventually reassembles. It’s a neat effect, and one that’s built to subtly catch people’s attention.

The message is supposed to be that the Red Cross helps put things back together after they fall apart. But the app isn’t tied to a current major disaster that makes people think of the Red Cross and how things are falling apart, so that may put a damper on its virality.

Plus, you do have to tweet every so often in order for your followers to notice the changes. (Not to get too off-topic, but I remember a couple years ago there was a campaign where celebrities like Lady Gaga took a vow to stop tweeting while they were raising money for a cause. It didn’t really work; part of the charm of Twitter is the stream keeps flowing day in and day out, so you don’t notice when someone’s gone.)

In a phone interview, Gilbert said he agreed in part with Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote a widely read New Yorker article about the role of social media activism having been overstated. “It’s never going to be the same thing as a sit-in, but at least we can make it count for something,” Gilbert said.

When things fall apart makes a couple of key improvements on previous Twitter pic campaigns: First, you have to donate in order to get the animation. And second, there’s an end date; after three days, your picture returns to normal. That is, unless you want to donate again.

Here’s a video that shows how it works:

Whenthings from Jennifer Kim on Vimeo.

Quick as a wink, I got in my tux and hailed a cab for midtown Manhattan. That message from a friend who shall not be named was how I ended up crashing the 2012 Inner Circle Show, an annual New York ritual where members of the city’s press corps put on an impressive musical roast of the local, regional and national political elite since 1922. It’s a big black-tie affair, and an invite is not easy to get.

The highlight of the night is always the Mayor’s Rebuttal. Last year, Mayor Mike Bloomberg flew around the stage as Spider-Man, taking advantage of the infamous buzz that plagued that Broadway show back then.

As you’ve probably figured out, Mayor Mike doesn’t do anything small. Being the 20th-richest person the world — worth some $22 billion via his majority ownership of the financial data and media company that bears his name — has its perks. One of them is the ability to hire the cast of a hit Broadway show to help make you look good on stage. (Full disclosure: I worked for that company for about a year before taking this job.)

This year, Bloomberg hired what must have been the majority of the cast of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” including its current headliner, Nick Jonas, a.k.a. “the cute Jonas Brother,” and also longtime Hollywood actor Beau Bridges.

Naturally, there were a lot of references to local political chatter. In the skit, Bloomberg bans coffee at City Hall — a reference to his administration’s war on nasty food ingredients like trans fats and salt — touching off a drama among city employees. He also quizzes the presidents of Cornell and Stanford University on their knowledge of New York — a quiz Stanford fails, prompting her to walk out. It’s a reference to a real-world competition between the two to develop a technology hub on Roosevelt Island, and yes, Stanford really did walk away. And of course there were plenty of references to Lady Gaga, whom Bloomberg famously kissed on New Year’s Eve.

Below is a six-minute highlight reel of Bloomberg’s production, which ran a good 30 minutes or more. The fun lasted well into the wee hours this morning. Hilton security guards shut down a crowded after-party in a penthouse suite at about 2:30 am. (I crashed that, too, again with the help of the friend who shall not be named.) One wonders if Bloomberg can be coaxed into a reprise when he hits the stage at our D10 conference in May. We can at least hope!

This year, none other than Justin Bieber is scheduled to stop by the event, while repeat attendee Lady Gaga is not.

And CES is also about to get Snookified.

Lady Gaga first appeared at CES in 2010, when it was announced she would be taking the role of creative director at Polaroid. Attendees and members of the press went a little goo-goo for Gaga, who certainly livened up the event. At last year’s show, the Lady of the hour again appeared at the Polaroid booth, and unveiled three new products (two of which, we reported earlier, have yet to hit the market, as is not uncommon for some of the products showcased at CES).

A spokesperson for Polaroid said Lady Gaga is still currently creative director for its Grey Label line, but is not scheduled to be at CES this year due to her demanding schedule.

So, let’s get to Bieber. The 17-year-old singing sensation is scheduled to appear at a booth for TOSY, a Vietnamese robotics company. I’ve been told he is not doing interviews, so all the 14-year-old girls out there wishing they were the Tavi Gevinson of consumer electronics coverage can hold off on bombarding the CEA with requests for press badges.

On to Snooki: The pint-sized “Jersey Shore” star will be there, not for high-tech tanning beds or electronic Bumpits, but to help hype iHip, a maker of audio accessories. Snooki, a.k.a. Nicole Polizzi, is hosting a fist-pumping VIP party at the Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino during the week, and will also be making appearances on the floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Other celebs expected to be in attendance at the big show: Actress Eliza Dushku, who will be at the show as an ambassador for the Entertainment Matters program sponsored by Variety magazine and Ericsson; 50 Cent will announce new audio products through his company, SMS Audio; fitness guru Jillian Michaels will kick things off at the Sports and Fitness TechZone; Dennis Rodman is going as part of the launch of Paltalk’s Firetalk (and at 6’6″ won’t be hard to spot on the floor); and actor Seth Green will appear at the booth for Shodogg, a service for controlling video-watching across multiple screens, using a smartphone (we can’t hardly wait!). Finally, Ludacris will be there, representing SOUL Electronics.

Last year, “Survivor” star Jeff Probst made a CES appearance, during which he gave some tips on how to — heh — survive the show. Probst did, in fact, survive, but won’t be making it this year.

More notable names are likely to appear, but whether there will be anyone big enough to drown out the buzzing, pinging and ringing of the electronics — and the shrill sounds of Biebermania — is still to be determined.

MORE CES NEWS:

• Complete coverage
• HP’s Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet
• Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)
• What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)
• Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market
• Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify — In the U.S.
• Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES
• Inside the CES Lost & Found
• FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!
• Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber
• Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different
• Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)
• Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question
• T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service
• Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)
• Motorola CEO: We’re Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year
• Kinect Helps Keep Aging Xbox at the Top of Its Game
• More From T-Mobile CEO: On Pricing, LTE and That Ever-Elusive iPhone
• Exclusive: New Boss Acknowledges Windows Phone Still Has “Awareness Problem”
• And You Thought Jawbone UP Was Going to Miss the CES Party!
• Interview: T-Mobile CEO Says No Second AT&T Deal Out There
• Grover Is at CES and I Am Missing It
• BlueStacks Bringing Android Apps to Windows 8
• Why the Future of TV Won’t Be Here Soon
• Nvidia’s Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways
• Dynamic Dual Coverage: Ballmer’s Last Act in Vegas and the BCS Championship in 3-D
• Microsoft Phoning In Its Last CES Keynote
• Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It’s Going to Sell You Web TV
• Samsung Unveils “Super” 55-Inch OLED TV
• Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It’s Been Dying to Share
• Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)
• Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile
• AT&T’s De La Vega: Shared Data Plans Still in the Works
• LG: 55-Inch Glasses-Free 3-D Screen Is on the Way
• LG Pushes 4G Smartphone Through Verizon: The LG Spectrum
• Live: AT&T’s Vegas Act Stars LTE and, Making Her Return to the Stage, Nokia
• CES Notebook: The Constant Search for Power and Vegas’ Worst-kept Secret
• Belkin Bringing Mobile TV to Lots of Cellphones, Will Anyone Tune In?
• Acer Introduces “World’s Thinnest” Ultrabook and a “Me-Too” Cloud Service
• There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!
• CES 2012: Snooki and Bieber Are In, Gaga Is Out!
• Coming to a Smartphone Near You: Gorilla Glass 2
• RIM Hopes Next PlayBook OS Will Impress at CES
• Ultrabooks, the Ultra-Fancy New Name for Laptops
• At CES, Expect More Gadgets Telling You to Get Off the Couch
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Microsoft Pulling Out of CES After Upcoming Show
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Dell Will Drop the Flashy Vegas Act for CES This Year
• Ultrabook Conga Line Preps for CES 2012

But just barely: Digital sales accounted for 50.3 percent of all U.S. music purchases last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

And if you want to caveat that number, that’s easy to do: For starters, the Nielsen number refers to unit sales, not revenue. So the music company’s books might still show that analog sales make more money for them. And recall stunts like Amazon’s Lady Gaga almost-giveaway last spring, when it sold nearly half a million albums at 99 cents a pop.

Still, the big picture finally resembles the one we’ve been hearing about since Napster showed up in 1999, or at least since Apple started selling music via iTunes in 2003: One day, files would beat discs.

The milestone happens to have occurred in the same year that music sales finally ticked up again. You can pick a couple different metrics to illustrate the rise, but they’re all single-digit increases. The important point is they’re not decreases.

That could simply be a one-off, and perhaps the result of lots of people buying Adele songs — Sony’s new star sold more albums than anyone has done since 2004 — or there could be a larger change afoot. Won’t know about that for a while.

But an industry that hasn’t had good news since the Backstreet Boys were big can afford to be patient.

Now — whether you can’t make it to Times Square or just don’t want to — there’s an app for that.

(Obviously!)

First introduced last year, the Times Square Official New Year’s Eve Ball App — 2012 shows a live stream of the Times Square Ball atop One Times Square, as well as video content leading up to and during the event. I’m told there will also be a live stream of Lady Gaga flicking the switch with Mayor Mike Bloomberg, to get the ball rolling, literally, at 11:59 pm ET.

With the app, users can share photos of themselves via Facebook and Twitter. They can also vote on photos — the photos with the most “likes” will be showcased on the giant Toshiba sign in Times Square that night (so if you’re at home partying in your pajamas and snapping self-portraits, you might want to think twice before sending your photos through the app).

The free app runs on iOS and Android devices, and was created by the Times Square Alliance and Countdown Entertainment, along with Toshiba and Livestream. And because few things are ever truly free, ads will run at the bottom of the app interface.

Last year’s inaugural Times Square New Year’s Eve app was downloaded 174,000 times by users in 163 countries, during a two-week period. An estimated one billion people worldwide watch the ball drop on television each year.

And 30,000 New Year’s Eve kiss photos were sent through last year’s version of the app.

Unless you’re certain you’ll want to use it again a year from now, this one can go on the short-shelf-life list of phone apps. Meanwhile, there are a few other apps you might check out for New Year’s Eve, to ensure the evening goes off without a hitch.

Like Uber, the free iPhone and Android app for calling a car service when all of the taxi cabs are taken. Uber is currently only available in seven cities, including San Francisco, Boston, New York, Seattle and Paris, and the company also sometimes adjusts pricing for holidays, like it did on Halloween this year. Uber has not yet responded to an inquiry about whether prices will go up on New Year’s Eve.

You might also want to check out an app that tempers your holiday wild side, such as the Webroot Sobriety Test app. Or an app that tests your cognitive abilities before you drunk-text, like the $.99 Textalyzer.

Or, for all those good intentions, how about an app not just for making resolutions, but for keeping them, like All My New Year Resolutions?

That designation comes from Web video tracker Visible Measures, which says the official upload from Apple, plus unofficial uploads and derivative clips (parodies, “responses,” etc.), generated 28 million views this year.

Runners-up for the “most viral” title, according to Visible Measures: Ads featuring Lady Gaga, the International Space Station, PlayStation 3 and YouTube gaming god Freddie W. (One of these things …)

It’s worth noting that Visible Measures’ methodology and classifications for this one are a bit particular. For instance, it includes ads for videogame platforms, but not the games themselves. There’s some logic to that, because while videogames have many, many more views, the bulk of them come from “game play” videos that players upload themselves.

Which is fine, but that also means that straight-up ads like Jonah Hill’s Call of Duty spot don’t make the list. And that one has racked up  a minimum of 17.7 million views this fall.

But at the very least we can say that these are five very, very popular Web videos from the past year.

Google Chrome’s “The Web is What You Make of It” Campaign: 22 million views

YouTube/Spacelab: 17 million views

Sony PS3 “Michael/Long Live Play” ad: 15.8 million views

YouTube star Freddie W’s Samsung “Gamer Commute” ad: 11.5 million views

It made a splash then, but two of the three products featured by Gaga at January’s CES — a digital camera and a pair of camera-glasses — still haven’t made it to market.

And it’s unclear if one of them ever will.

The glasses, called the GL20 Camera Glasses (GL indicates the Lady Gaga “Grey Label” brand), were introduced alongside the GL10 Instant Mobile Bluetooth printer and the GL30 Instant Digital camera, which is designed in the style of old Polaroid cameras.

The printer became available for preorder in May, as planned, although it was listed at $20 more than Polaroid’s original $150 target price for retail. Polaroid Chief Technology Officer Jon Pollock explained in July that the company, like many electronics companies, has faced supply problems due to the massive earthquake in Japan.

The GL30 camera is now scheduled to launch in retail outlets in 2012. Citing consumer demand for the Gaga-hyped camera, Polaroid in November introduced the Z340 Instant Digital Camera, which has similar features and capabilities, as an alternative.

But the Gaga goggles — which were arguably the coolest element, capturing images and instantly uploading them to the device’s LCD lenses for display — still haven’t made it to market. Polaroid had previously said the gadget would arrive in the third or fourth quarter of this year at an undetermined price.

Polaroid has declined to offer insight into the delay, or to say whether store shelves will ever see the glasses. A spokeswoman for the company issued the following statement: “Polaroid and Lady Gaga are looking forward to giving consumers even more ways to restore creativity to images, both digital and printed, with additional Grey Label products in the near future. As the GL20 Camera Glasses are unlike anything seen before, additional time is needed to ensure that consumers will receive a product that exceeds expectations.”

A representative for Lady Gaga declined to comment.

To be fair, it’s not uncommon for products unveiled at CES to come to market later than expected. But for Polaroid, the delays are another ding in its armor as it struggles in the face of new digital-imaging technologies. The company has said it hoped the installment of Lady Gaga as creative director two years ago would give Polaroid a needed boost in terms of creativity and innovation.

People close to the situation have said that Lady Gaga has been “very involved” in the design and creation of the Grey Label gadgets. But, in this case, it seems that even superstar status can’t propel a product to market.

Enjoy (really):

Neither of those developments* are news, so let’s skip ahead and get to the stuff that’s not being talked about today, but should be:

In addition to the angels Turntable has announced — who include Lady Gaga manager Troy Carter, former Facebook sales boss Tim Kendall, and big media investor Vivi Nevo — the company has also brought on other big music industry heavy hitters as investors/advisers. Turntable won’t confirm their names, but I’m told at least a couple of them hold big jobs at music labels, so go ahead and guess if you’d like.

Oftentimes the angel list accompanying a funding announcement isn’t much more than a vanity exercise. But in this case the news is important because Turntable is indeed trying to negotiate licenses with the big music labels and publishers.

That’s a change in strategy for Turntable, which had earlier argued that it wouldn’t need licenses, because it was a “non-interactive Web radio service” a la Pandora. So having executives at the big labels who are also investors is a nice advantage for Turntable to have.

And they’ll need as many as they can get, because they’re going to try to create a new kind of license. Basically they’re gunning for a hybrid license which would have them paying more per stream than Pandora does, but less than a full-fledged, on-demand interactive service like Spotify ponies up.

As I wrote in August, the notion of creating a brand-new digital music license and getting buy-in from all the big players would have seemed ridiculous a few months ago. But for whatever reason — lots of folks point to Spotify finally getting its U.S. deal approved after two years of work — people both inside and outside of the labels are murmuring positive things about what Turntable wants to do.

It will still be expensive, though — assume the start-up will have to hand over equity and a recurring royalty stream to make this work.

Just as important for Turntable: Parlaying its buzzy status into something regular people might actually want to use. Turntable says its users stream a million songs a day, but doesn’t say how many people are actually using it. But it’s clear that so far this is primarily something that appeals to a relatively small group of musical digerati.

And that group appears to have been shrinking since the company’s first burst of publicity this summer, according to metrics from AppData.

*One tiny correction for other reports about Turntable’s funding: Lotus founder Mitch Kapor, who had invested in Stickybits, the company that famously pivoted into what we’re seeing today, isn’t in this round. Via email, he says that he didn’t sign to back the company once it became a music start-up because his Kapor Capital “is focusing now on education, health care, and other positive social impact areas.”

Vanity Fair magazine put out its high-profile “New Establishment” list of the top 50 people, who are “an innovative new breed of buccaneering visionaries, engineering prodigies, and entrepreneurs, who quite often sport hoodies, floppy hair, and backpacks.”

The hoodie part would be referring to Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who topped the list — which is in the just-released October issue — for the second year in a row.

The Vanity Fair list was packed with Silicon Valley luminaries.

The No. 2 spot went to the hopelessly conjoined twins at Google, CEO Larry Page and his co-founder Sergey Brin. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos was No. 3, followed by newly born CEO Tim Cook and top product guy Jonathan Ive of Apple at No. 4, with Twitter creator and Square founder Jack Dorsey at No. 5.

Interestingly, super-VCs Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz clocked in this year at No. 6.

The digitally fast-forward Lady Gaga was the top woman on the list at No. 9, in front of “Harry Potter” author J. K. Rowling at No. 16.

And, clocking in at No. 40? Why, me and my partner-in-crime at AllThingsD, Walt Mossberg. He is apparently a “kingmaker” of tech and I do “juicy exclusives.”

That actually is pretty accurate. More importantly, we were ranked higher than Justin Timberlake and Ashton Kutcher. In other words: Mission accomplished!

We also beat the Angry Birds dudes at No. 49, whom my two kids would nonetheless have voted tops over their mom any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

In addition, Vanity Fair broke off a list of 25 “Powers That Be,” which is made up of a lot of longtime “New Establishment” folks, as well as another list called the “Hall of Fame.”

“These are the people who have shaped the world we live in today — and continue to wield enormous influence,” said Vanity Fair, which translates into dustier moguls.

Topping the powers-that-be, of course, is Apple’s co-founder and Chairman Steve Jobs. And outgone Google CEO and now Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is now enshrined in the hall of fame.

As Walt and I head to a good table at the Minetta Tavern to meet the cool peeps for a celebratory drink, here is the official press releases from Vanity Fair:

FACEBOOK FOUNDER MARK ZUCKERBERG TOPS VANITY FAIR’S NEW ESTABLISHMENT LIST FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW

Sergey Brin and Larry Page Take No. 2 Spot, Lady Gaga Jumps to the Top 10 of Tech-Dominant List

NEW YORK, N.Y. — “The Age of Information gives way to a burgeoning Age of Technology,” announces Graydon Carter, remarking on the “seismic shift in interest and influence” that has occurred in the 17 years that Vanity Fair has been ranking America’s power players. The magazine’s 2011 New Establishment list identifies the top 50 of an innovative new breed of buccaneering visionaries, engineering prodigies, and entrepreneurs, who quite often sport hoodies, floppy hair, and backpacks.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the inescapable social-networking site Facebook, maintains his perch at the top of Vanity Fair’s 17th annual New Establishment List ranking for the second year in a row. With a possible I.P.O. on the horizon by 2012, which could value the company anywhere between $50 and $100 billion, Facebook has enough clout to worry even the unshakable Google. Zuckerberg is still the youngest person ever to top the list.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founders of Google, are in the No. 2 spot this year, closing in on Zuckerberg as they jump up one spot, from No. 3 in 2010. Eric Schmidt, who appeared on the list last year with the duo, has since been pushed out of the C.E.O’s office, replaced by Page. Despite reports of an anti-trust investigation, Google has been setting its sites on Facebook by concentrating on strategic initiatives, such as engineering social-networking features.

Rounding out the top five are Jeff Bezos, of Amazon, at No. 3, Tim Cook and Jonathan Ive, of Apple, at No. 4, and Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey, at No. 5.

Lady Gaga makes an appearance for the second year in a row. Coming in at No. 9, she is the highest-ranking woman on the list, in front of J. K. Rowling at No. 16, Sheryl Sandberg, of Facebook, at No. 26, Angela Ahrendts with Christopher Bailey, of Burberry, at No. 30, Natalie Massenet at No. 32, and Kara Swisher with Walt Mossberg at No. 40. At 25 years old, Gaga is also the youngest person on the list — not a surprise for someone whose fans managed to crash Amazon’s servers in their desperation to download her third album.

Youthful energy is spread throughout this year’s list with 15 members under the age of 40, including Zuckerberg, Brin and Page, Dorsey, Lady Gaga, Andrew Mason, Sean Parker, Ryan Kavanaugh, Jeremy Stoppelman, Ashton Kutcher, Dennis Crowley, Daniel Ek, Mikael Hed and Niklas Hed, and Justin Timberlake.

There are 14 billionaires on the list: Zuckerberg, Brin and Page, Bezos, Mark Pincus, Michael Moritz, J. K. Rowling, Jim Breyer, Reid Hoffman, Herbert Allen III, Yuri Milner, Robin Li, Parker, and Peter Thiel.

Five member of the New Establishment are actively involved in space exploration, including Brin, Elon Musk, Bezos, Thiel, and Dennis Crowley. Eight of the New Establishment nominees can count themselves members of the ever growing Stanford Mafia; they include Brin, Page, Reed Hastings, Jim Breyer, Hoffman, Musk, Thiel, and John Hennessy.

The New Establishment, Vanity Fair’s annual ranking of the top leaders of our time, is made up of owners, creators, buyers, thinkers, and innovators — the movers and shakers in the worlds of technology, media, business, politics, entertainment, and fashion. These men and women are the taste-makers and trendsetters, opinion formers and agenda creators, not to mention empire builders. Entry into the ranks of Vanity Fair’s list is based on a number of factors: wealth, influence, and philanthropy, as well as such intangibles as vision and the x factor.

The October issue of Vanity Fair will be on newsstands in New York and L.A. on September 1, and nationally and on the iPad September 6.

THE VANITY FAIR NEW ESTABLISHMENT

1. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
2. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google
3. Jeff Bezos, Amazon
4. Tim Cook and Jonathan Ive, Apple
5. Jack Dorsey, Square, Twitter
6. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz
7. Reed Hastings, Netflix
8. John Lasseter, Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios
9. Lady Gaga, singer
10. Dan Doctoroff, Bloomberg L.P.
11. Dick Costolo, Twitter
12. Mark Pincus, Zynga
13. Jim Breyer, Accel Partners
14. Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, and Graham King, Movies
15. Michael Moritz, Sequoia Capital
16. J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter
17. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park
18. Reid Hoffman, Greylock Partners, LinkedIn
19. Herb Allen III, Allen & Co.
20. Judd Apatow, Apatow Productions
21. Jay-Z, Roc Nation
22. Todd Phillips, Green Hat Films
23. Yuri Milner, DST Global
24. J. J. Abrams, writer, director, producer
25. Robin Li, Baidu
26. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook
27. Andrew Mason, Groupon
28. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, television
29. Mark Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson, Leverage
30. Angela Ahrendts and Christopher Bailey, Burberry
31. Elon Musk, Tesla Motors, Space X
32. Natalie Massenet, Net-a-Porter Group
33. Paul Graham, Y Combinator
34. Sean Parker, entrepreneur
35. Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures, Flatiron Partners
36. Peter Thiel, Founders Fund, Clarium Capital Management
37. Peter Jackson, Wingnut Films
38. Ryan Kavanaugh, Relativity Media
39. Mike Allen, Politico
40. Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, All Things D
41. John Hennessy, Stanford University
42. Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp
43. Ashton Kutcher, actor, investor
44. Tyler Perry, director, producer, writer, actor
45. Dennis Crowley, Foursquare
46. Kevin Ryan, Gilt Groupe
47. Daniel Ek, Spotify
48. Henry Blodget, Business Insider
49. Mikael Hed, Niklas Hed, and Peter Vesterbacka, Rovio
50. Justin Timberlake, singer, actor

STEVE JOBS HOLDS THE TOP SPOT ON VANITY FAIR’S LIST OF THE POWERS THAT BE

Embattled News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch in the Top 5

NEW YORK, N.Y. — This year Vanity Fair inaugurates a list of the Powers That Be. These are the people who have shaped the world we live in today — and continue to wield enormous influence. Many are longtime New Establishment members, and their destinies are intertwined with the members of this year’s New Establishment.

Steve Jobs, of Apple, holds the top spot on the list of the Powers That Be. Since Jobs took control of the company 14 years ago, the stock’s share price has risen more than 6,500 percent. At the height of the debt crisis in late July, Apple had more cash on hand than the U.S. government.

Bernard Arnault, of luxury-goods company LVMH, ranks in the No. 2 spot. As an overseer of countless enduring luxury brands, Arnault has left his mark on the industry. Last year he spent $2 billion to accumulate a 20 percent stake in family-controlled but publicly traded Hermès.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is No.3 on this year’s list while News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch comes in at No. 4. The tumultuous News of the World scandals this year have shaken the media baron, but also shown his staying power in the face of just about anything. Brian Roberts and Steve Burke, of Comcast, NBCUniversal, who recently acquired the U.S. media rights to the Olympic Games through 2020, are No. 5.

Jill Abramson is the highest-ranking woman out of six on the list, at No. 9. She is followed by Angelina Jolie with Brad Pitt at No. 11, Sue Naegle with Richard Plepler and Michael Lombardo at No. 15, Anne Sweeney with George Bodenheimer at No. 22, Bonnie Hammer at No. 24, and Arianna Huffington with Tim Armstrong at No. 25.

Because some power is permanent, Vanity Fair nominates a number of regulars to the Hall of Fame this year. Warren Buffett, of Berkshire Hathaway, joins Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, Tom Ford, actor Tom Hanks, and designer Karl Lagerfeld. Network impresario Oprah Winfrey, Jeffrey Katzenberg, of DreamWorks Animation, and talk-show host Charlie Rose all make the ranks as well.

The October issue of Vanity Fair will be on newsstands in New York and L.A. on September 1, and nationally and on the iPad September 6.

THE POWERS THAT BE

1. Steve Jobs, Apple
2. Bernard Arnault, LVMH
3. Michael Bloomberg, mayor, New York City
4. Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation
5. Brian Roberts and Steve Burke, Comcast, NBCUniversal
6. François-Henri Pinault, PPR
7. Bob Iger, Walt Disney Company
8. Jeffrey Bewkes, Time Warner
9. Jill Abramson, The New York Times
10. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft
11. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, movies, philanthropy
12. Diego Della Valle, Tod’s
13. Roman Abramovich, investments
14. Mickey Drexler, J. Crew
15. Richard Plepler, Sue Naegle, and Michael Lombardo, HBO
16. Larry Gagosian, Gagosian Gallery
17. Harvey and Bob Weinstein, the Weinstein Company
18. Marc Jacobs, designer
19. Lorne Michaels, Saturday Night Live
20. David Zaslav, Discovery Communications
21. Jean Pigozzi, investments, art
22. George Bodenheimer and Anne Sweeney, Disney Media Networks
23. Vivi Nevo, NV Investments
24. Bonnie Hammer, NBCU Cable Entertainment and Cable Studios
25. Tim Armstrong and Arianna Huffington, AOL Huffington Post Media Group

HALL OF FAME

Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music Group
Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway
Ron Conway, angel investor
Philippe Dauman, Viacom
Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, IAC, DVF
John Doerr, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Larry Ellison, Oracle Corporation
Tom Ford, designer/filmmaker
Ted Forstmann, IMG Worldwide
Tom Freston, Firefly3
Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, Imagine Entertainment
Tom Hanks, actor
Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks Animation
Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures
Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel
Ralph Lauren, Polo Ralph Lauren
John Malone, Liberty Media
Ron Meyer, Universal Studios
Leslie Moonves, CBS
Ronald Perelman, MacAndrews and Forbes
Miuccia Prada, Prada
Charlie Rose, talk-show host
Eric Schmidt, Google
Terry Semel, investor
Oprah Winfrey, OWN

(Full disclosure: Readers who look closely at the list will notice that all things ATD senior editor Peter Kafka is listed as a contributor. This is true! Also true: Peter wrote biographical entries for several people on the list, but has zero input on its composition. He tells us he had no idea that we were being considered for inclusion, and we believe him. He also says that had he been asked for his opinion, he would have voted for us, his bosses, to be included. We also believe that.)

That’s the pitch behind Talenthouse, a start-up designed to leverage the social network’s ever-expanding user base to help celebrities and brands run “social crowdsourcing competitions.”

The idea is that artists like Lady Gaga can use the service to find bloggers who will document her tour, or someone to design T-shirts, etc. But the real point of the competitions is the competitions themselves, which are supposed to become mini-“American Idol”s: They’re meant to drive exposure for the celebrities — and advertisers that back them — on Facebook.

Two-year-old Talenthouse has been signing up a steady stream of celebrities to use its platform, and today it is bringing in another slug of them, via a deal with Universal Music Group. The world’s largest music label has agreed to provide more than 100 of its artists for Talenthouse campaigns in a revenue-sharing deal.

Universal can’t compel any artists to use Talenthouse, so this doesn’t mean the service will get access to the likes of Jay-Z or U2. But it at least gets the chance to pitch them on the idea. The fact that the start-up has already worked with Universal star Lady Gaga won’t hurt.

Lots of people, actually. We’re more than a decade past Napster, and eight years past iTunes, but the majority of the music industry’s revenue still comes from discs.

Even for new stuff! In the same week that Amazon all but gave away digital copies of Lady Gaga’s new album last month, discs made up almost half of her sales.

Amazing!

My hunch is that, increasingly, the people who are buying music in physical form are divided into two groups. There are the people buying it as an afterthought along with gum and other impulse buys stacked near the cash register. And there are the people buying it because they really like stuff — physical, tactile stuff — which might be as important as the music itself.

Here’s stuff for the latter group: Lavish boxed sets from Sony, via its Pop Market Web store. These are collections of ye olde timey music, designed to appeal to generations who remember the world before Netscape and who most likely remember the world before FM radio, too.

Perhaps the kind of people who would drop $99 on an 11-disc Aretha Franklin set. Or $80 on the Byrds. Or maybe even $269 on Miles Davis. (Thanks to Digital Music News for flagging.)

Some of you may be stifling the impulse to titter here. But these things do well for Sony, with good reason: As long as you have an interest in owning and/or playing compact discs, you’re getting good bang for your buck when it comes to the music, at least in raw tonnage.

And if you’re into looking at 5-inch by 5-inch reproductions of old album covers, etc., you’ll be doubly pleased. Nothing wrong with that.

Okey doke. I’m off to hear new stuff at Turntable.fm.

At that rate, Zynga’s Mark Skaggs has said before that if you lined up all the users across the U.S., they’d cross 6.36 times from New York to San Francisco.

Nowadays, the game is showing its age and the number of people coming back on a daily basis is nearly a third of that.

So, can a promotion with pop artist and marketing machine Lady Gaga provide a lift?

Yep, it sure can.

Unfortunately, the lift is probably only temporary, according to the latest usage trends from AppData.com, which tracks usage levels of Facebook applications.

Here’s how users went Gaga for GagaVille:

The promotion kicked off on May 17, six days before Lady Gaga’s new album “Born this Way” was released. Farmers were invited to visit Lady Gaga’s compound that included lots of purple, crystals, unicorns and even sheep riding motorcycles.

However, response to the themed farm hardly registered with visitors clocking in at roughly 11 million a day, which was lower than the week prior when users registered more than 11.5 million.

That changed quickly. On May 19, visits spiked to 13.5 million after players were able to unlock and stream three unreleased tracks. The first day, “Marry the Night” was available, followed by “Electric Chapel” on May 18 and “Fashion of His Love” on May 19.

It was either “Fashion of His Love” that created the spike or the combination of all three. Regardless, since that day, visits to the Farm have fallen off a cliff.

Now that the album is out–and you could buy it for only 99 cents on Amazon–interest in FarmVille seems to be withering once again.

One way to measure interest is to find the percentage of monthly users who visit on a daily basis.

That number on FarmVille has fallen to even below pre-Gaga levels (see chart below). Currently, about 25 percent are returning on a daily basis. Before the promotion, rates were closer to 26 percent, and at the promotion’s peak, 30 percent of monthly users returned daily.

Since social gaming is still in its infancy, the lifecycle of a popular game is still unclear. Regardless of Lada Gaga’s influence on FarmVille, it still doesn’t have too much to worry about.

FarmVille remains the second most popular app on Facebook, trailing only behind Zynga’s newest game CityVille.

• People will still buy music if it’s really, really cheap. Billboard says that Amazon sold 440,000 digital copies of her new “Born This Way” album at $0.99 each. The e-commerce giant sold 330,000 copies on Monday, even though demand for promotion blew its servers up, and 110,000 more copies on Thursday, when it repeated the stunt.
• People will still buy music if they’re really, really interested in a particular act. Billboard also says Lady Gaga is set to sell 1.15 million albums total this week. Which means that buyers are paying full price for some 700,000 of them.
• Bonus lesson, because we already knew it, but it’s good to remember anyway: People are still buying CDs! Billboard also projects that Apple’s iTunes will account for 200,000 units sold by the end of the week. Add in Amazon’s totals and you get to 640,000 digital albums sold. Which means that Americans will have bought more than 500,000 good old-fashioned compact discs this week, too.

Have you bought a CD in the last year? Do you know anyone who has? Me neither. But someone is: A decade after Napster, discs still account for a majority of the music industry’s revenues.

And now, because I’m tired of embedding Lady Gaga videos in Lady Gaga posts, something old-timey:

*Really. I know. It’s weird, right? At least for people of a certain age, and I am one of those people. But whatevs, as I believe the kids say.

Today, Amazon is trying a do-over. “This time, we’re ready,” the store promises via Twitter.

I bet they will be, but I also bet it won’t matter: Demand for big new albums tends to drop off immediately after they come out, and my hunch is that everyone who had to have “Born This Way” has already got “Born This Way.”

Earlier this week an industry source told The Wall Street Journal that Amazon and Apple’s iTunes had collectively sold between 250,000 and 350,000 copies on Monday.

It’s still important for Amazon to try this again, though. The real point of the promotion was to promote the company’s new cloud music service–anyone who bought the album got an extra 15 gigs of storage in Amazon’s locker for free.

And the fact that Amazon’s servers couldn’t keep up with demand is a sort of anti-promotion. Definitely worth taking a mulligan on this one.

Zynga is poised to file for its initial public offering, according to sources close to the situation.

The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission could come as early as this week, or next week at the latest.

The move is not entirely unexpected, given how well the recent IPOs of several Internet companies have done recently, including business networking site LinkedIn last week and Russian search giant Yandex today.

Their strong performances show the huge investor appetite for fast-growing and high-profile Web 2.0 firms. Wall Street is also prepping for eventual public offerings from social buying site Groupon and, the big fish, Facebook.

Zynga’s valuation in its last round of funding was $10 billion, but it is likely to price itself higher in an offering.

After all, LinkedIn now has a market valuation of $9 billion, double its pre-IPO price.

Whatever the price, a Zynga IPO is a major coup, especially given how quickly it has morphed into one of the most important forces in online gaming, largely via distribution on the Facebook platform.

The company claims that it has 250 million people actively playing its games every month. Its largest game currently is CityVille, which attracts 90 million monthly users, reports AppData. Its original Poker game still manages to attract 35 million monthly users.

Its early titles, such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars, first vaulted the San Francisco-based company into consumer prominence, and it has recently struck a number of high-profile branding deals with Lady Gaga and the makers of the upcoming animated movie “Kung Fu Panda 2,” among others.

That’s also meant a solid business. Zynga reportedly generated about $400 million in profit last year on about $850 million in revenue, although sources said the filing will reveal much more robust numbers.

The company has also grown its work force quickly. Last year, Zynga hired more than 800 people and today has more than 1,500 full-time employees in 13 offices, spanning six countries.

Recently, at the opening of its new Seattle office, its founder and CEO Mark Pincus–who has tried to hit the start-up jackpot many times before–said he had Amazon-sized ambitions for Zynga, referring to that city’s online retail giant.

Depending on how the offering goes, he might want to think bigger.

Sources said Goldman Sachs will be among the lead bankers in the Zynga offering.

Zynga declined to comment on its IPO plans.