Meet Apple's Most Important Internet Executive, Eddy Cue

Robert, a former Apple executive, now works in real estate in the Los Angeles area.

Spoonemore's Foursquare profile was unlinked to other accounts, but we quickly found her professional connection to Cue: As SVP of interactive services at the NBA, she signed a deal to bring basketball games to iTunes in 2006. She's now CEO of Dwellable.

Larson is head of content acquisition at Apple—a pretty key role for iTunes. He joined in 2003 from Yahoo, where he spent most of his six-year tenure working on music products.

As a record-label executive, Holt did a groundbreaking deal to put iTunes downloads inside a video game. He's now COO at Maker Studios, a YouTube-focused video network which also uses iTunes to distribute its artists' work.

While Cue gets most of the credit for iTunes' success, Higa, an early Apple employee who returned to the company in 2001, did the early deals that launched the iTunes Store, while Cue focused on building the e-commerce infrastructure for it. Higa had much more direct experience negotiating with music labels from his experience as a RealNetworks executive.

Before joining Facebook and starting his own company, Path, Morin got his career start at Apple and retains close ties to executives there.

We had trouble figuring out the connection between Klein, a search-engine-optimization expert, and Cue—until we saw that Klein runs the website for Duke Blue Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski. (Cue is a Duke alum and a huge Blue Devils fan.)

Hayashi, a former Apple executive, now works with the cofounders of Palm at Numenta.

Kosner is the EVP and GM of ESPN's print and digital media. ESPN has long been an iTunes content partner.

James cofounded Omniture, which he sold to Adobe in 2009. We're guessing James and Cue know each other because Apple was a key Omniture customer—something which got both companies in trouble over a lack of privacy disclosures back in 2006.

Pruden, who works in developer relations, has been called the most powerful woman at Apple.

MLB Advanced Media is another iTunes content partner.

Mirrashidi is an engineering director at Apple. He has a critical patent on redownloading digital media.

Janes, who most recently worked at Wize Commerce, ran Apple's online store for five years. Wize Commerce bought Janes's previous company, FanSnap, which counted Cue as an advisor.

Gautier, an engineering VP, is a critical player inside the company, overseeing the iTunes Store and iCloud. He has several patents related to digital media.

He also seems to be involved in Apple's recent hire of the team from Color Labs, the troubled startup that imploded last year. A lawsuit by an ex-Color employee mentioned that Gautier would be overseeing the group.

Robbin created iTunes—literally. He cowrote a music-playing application called SoundJam MP, which Apple bought and turned into iTunes. He was deemed so critical to Apple that Steve Jobs would not allow Time magazine to publish his last name in an article. He's now reportedly heading up Apple's efforts to break into the TV business.

We puzzled over this unlinked profile for awhile. Then we found a tell-tale clue: Tony F. was friends with Rob C.—Rob Coneybeer, a venture capitalist at Shasta Ventures.

Coneybeer is an investor in Nest, the home-automation startup.

And Nest was cofounded by a Tony F.—Tony Fadell, the father of the iPod, who obviously worked closely with Cue at Apple.

Mystery solved!

The $600 Million Social Life Of Foursquare Founder Dennis Crowley >