Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/15/zuckerberg_time/
Zuckerberg beats Assange to claim Person of the Year™
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Posted in Bootnotes, 15th December 2010 14:13 GMT
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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has defied WikiLeaks supporters to claim Time magazine's Person of the Year™ crown.
Julian Assange came in third, behind the Tea Party, the chaotic but influential agglomeration of US right wingers. WikiLeaks had openly campaigned for him to win, issuing fanciful claims [1] it would protect him from "assassination or extradition".
WikiLeakers can console themselves in the knowledge that a fellow web celebrity and former hacker, who like Assange is sometimes portrayed as arrogant and socially awkward, claimed the accolade.
At 26, Zuckerberg is the second-youngest winner. The 25-year-old aviator Charles Lindbergh was made the first Person of the Year™ in 1927 for his record-breaking transatlantic flight.
Time said the Facebook founder deserved its award "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".
Zuckerberg joins Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Intel co-founder Andy Grove as the third tech billionaire to make the honour roll. "The Computer" got a special Machine of the Year™ Time cover in 1982, while in a cringeworthy nod to the fashion for "web 2.0" technologies, "You" were named 2006 Person of the Year™.
Zuckerberg seems a fair choice. This year Facebook cemented its domination of social networking, and its cultural significance was acknowledged in a Hollywood movie that dramatised its creation at Harvard, including Zuckerberg's sometimes dubious business practices. He meanwhile buffed his reputation by announcing a $100m philanthropic gift to New Jersey schools on Oprah Winfrey.
You can read the lengthy Time article about why it chose him here [2]. ®