Top web brands

While NBC, The New York Times, Time Inc. and Clear Channel may be kings of the offline media world, it's a whole new ballgame on the web, where such stalwarts regularly are thumped by smaller players such as The Weather Channel and About.com when it comes to traffic.

"It's a totally different medium, and the web-based companies have designed and built content for this medium," said Larry Kramer, founder of MarketWatch, now owned by Dow Jones, and former president of CBS Digital Media. "Traditional media companies are still trying to figure out how they translate what they do for the web."