Tuned In
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TIME Updates Zuckerberg's Status to "Person of the Year"

By James Poniewozik | @poniewozik | December 15, 2010 | +

In 2006, TIME’s Person of the Year was You; this year, it’s Your Former High School Classmates on Facebook. TIME’s managing editor Rick Stengel this morning announced the Person of the Year for 2010: Facebook founder (and Social Network inspiration) Mark Zuckerberg. (Read Lev Grossman’s 8,000-word profile of him here.)  Because POY is a media event, and Facebook, really, is a media phenomenon (as well as one of many online channels of video distribution), Tuned In seems like a pretty good place to discuss it.

So: what do you think of the choice? What do you think of Zuckerberg?

Here’s one thought to kick off discussion: among the people I knew who were guessing who the POY was (and I honestly did not know in advance), one leading candidate was Julian Assange. To play devil’s advocate (that is, TIME’s advocate), while WikiLeaks was a big story, I wonder if it’s magnified by being the most recent big story of 2010. And there’s a case to be made that WikiLeaks is simply one instance of the shift in the information ecosystem today, whereas Facebook is, increasingly, the ecosystem itself.

There’s also the argument—which there often is with POY—of “Why this year?” In a way, the choice of POY is a battle between differing views of history: should it always recognize someone who was involved in a distinct and influential event that calendar year (Assange), or should it recognize the influence of people behind cultural shifts that necessarily take years to play out (Zuckerberg)?

Another frequent guess was that the Tea Party, or someone associated with it, would or should have been POY. If you think so, let us know why. And a related discussion topic: when you look at recent choices of TIME POY (Ben Bernanke in 2009, You [i.e., social media] in 2006, philanthropists in 2005), is the magazine arguing that the commercial sphere is as much or more important than politics? Is that right or wrong? Let us know, before you go and post it to all of your friends on Facebook.

Related Topics: facebook, persons unknown, time magazine, Uncategorized

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  • pamelajaye

    I’d love to, but, I apparently posted a comment on Gawker *just once* and I was up all night changing passwords from linkedin to amazon to yahoo and gmail.

    I’m not sure which I spend more time doing on Facebook: letting my friends know what I am up to and finding out what’s up with them, or trying to figure out the latest reconfiguration and how it affects my privacy and answering my friends’ questions about it.

    Facebook and I have a real love hate relationship. But there’s one other thing. When I was a kid, I heard that TV would destroy my attention span. Not even close. Facebook and Twitter, on the other hand, have really impacted my attention span.

    Facebook also now, I’m fairly sure, gets more of my time than TV.

  • danamc18

    I completely understand the reasons behind making Mark Zuckerberg POY. Even though Facebook has existed for years, it’s finally become excessively mainstream and now almost everybody uses the social networking sight. And the fact that a critically acclaimed film was made regarding it’s founder and origins make this a timely POY.

    But I simply, and irrationally, can’t stand Mark Zuckerberg. I have held this opinion well before The Social Network. (And yes, I do have a facebook and have had it since it was called “The Facebook”). But seeing him getting all of this attention is just so completely obnoxious to me.

    I know it’s not a very constructive comment, but that’s my opinion.

  • viemagiquesn

    Question to Time Magazine: Why bother asking your readers to vote for the Person of the Year if you were going to ignore the results as completely as you have? Julian Assange won by 382,026 votes; Zuckerberg received a mere 18,353 votes. If you wanted Zuckerberg anyway – which evidently you did – you should have dispensed with the farce of a poll.

    As for the result – it’s a no-brainer, really. Assange has revealed some of the most dirty secrets and abuses of power and influence held by our governments and the corporations that bankroll them. Zuckerman sells our private information for profit. So of course, Assange must be ignored by the corporate media (when he’s not smeared with the ‘sex crime’ tag) while Zuckerman is praised as a good member of the gang.

  • rlahumada

    i am totally agree, in my opinion, this is an offense to democracy

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