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TIME Names Mark Zuckerberg Person of Year

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the remember-when-it-was-you dept.

theodp writes "Sorry, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates — there's a new geek kid in town. TIME magazine has selected Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as its Person of the Year. Why? 'For connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives,' reasoned TIME At age 26, Zuckerberg is TIME's second-youngest selection, bested only by Charles Lindbergh. So what does Zuckerberg do for an encore — Academy Award, maybe?"

5 of 317 comments (clear)

  1. Time cops out again by NotInfinitumLabs · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They've had a history of choosing a non-controversial candidate over the obvious winner since choosing the Ayatollah back in 1979 caused them to lose subscriptions. Remember when they picked Giulianni over Bin Laden?

  2. Re:Julian Assange by Weezul · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd rock if he won both the Pulitzer and the Nobel Peace Prize though, obviously those send a far more important message, they are just not as quite as timely. lol

    In any case, wikileaks will "expose an ecosystem of corruption" in a "major U.S. bank" early next year, while presumably continuing to work their way through the U.S. embassy cables. So I'd imagine he'll get another shot. :)

    Amnesty International declare him a prisoner of conscience once more details emerge about the rape accusations.

    --
    The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
  3. Re:Julian Assange by Fractal+Dice · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I see Wikileaks and Facebook as the two ends of this generation's tug of war over where power rests in the next phase of the information age. Wikileaks is taking the data of large organizations and putting it in the hands of the public. Facebook is taking the data of details of the public's lives and putting it into the hands of private organizations.

  4. Re:orly? by Deep+Esophagus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm still puzzling over the "creating a new system of information" part. I realize that from a marketing perspective, Facebook is ten bajillion times more successful than Friendster, Myspace, etc. but Zuckerberg didn't *create* social networking any more than Al Gore *created* the internet.

  5. Re:Zuckerberg over Assange? by pjfontillas · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Assange had the majority vote. TIMES reserved the right to choose the winner regardless of the poll outcome.

    --
    Life. Is. Good.