I agree with Time's selection of Mark Zuckerberg as person of the year.
With a membership approaching 600 million, there is no denying that Zuckerberg has -- by some measures -- direct influence on more lives than most of the world leaders. But that's only a small part of what makes him an important world figure. He's changing the way people think about relationships and, most important, how we organize and share the information and images that are the core of our lives.
Zuckerberg isn't just the founder and CEO of an influential company; he's also the architect of the notion that sharing information among a wide group of people can actually be beneficial. Like it or hate it, but Zuckerberg's passion to get people to be at least semi-public with their name, photo, school and work place is an important part of his ideology. He wants people to be findable and truly believes that people's lives with be enhanced if they use the Internet to interact with those they care about. Obviously, a lot of people agree. Just about everyone I know -- even people who rail against Facebook's privacy policies --is now on Facebook.
Growing Up and Evolving
As someone who has observed and interviewed Zuckerberg over the years, I can also say that he too is evolving. When I met him a few years ago, I found him not only shy but awkward and off-putting, but over the past few months I've seen a different Zuckerberg emerge. With a couple of notable exceptions, I've found him to be relaxed, direct and often funny. The guy who Leslie Stahl interviewed a couple of Sundays ago on 60 Minutes is the real Mark Zuckerberg -- not the one depicted by Aaron Sorkin in The Social Network.
Sharing Not Necessarily Dangerous
The most controversial aspect of Zuckerberg is the way Facebook treats personal information, but encouraging people to share isn't necessarily a bad thing. As someone who's been involved in online safety since almost since the term was coined, I've put a lot of thought over the years about what information people ought to share and who they should share it with. There was a time when most of us in the online safety world believed that we -- and especially children -- should keep our personal lives personal and avoid going online to share where we live, where we go to school and what we look like. But Zuckerberg changed that by encouraging people to do just that. And it turns out, according to the Crimes Against Children Research Center, that sharing personal information isn't necessarily dangerous, even for adolescents.
Of course, that doesn't mean we should share everything with everyone but, to his credit, Zuckerberg did build tools into Facebook that allow people to limit access to most of what they post. Some have criticized Facebook about the complexity of those tools and because users have to opt-out of some of some sharing, but at least the tools are there.
Zuckerberg didn't just change the way we socialize. He changed the way many people do business (companies using Facebook to reach out to consumers) and has even influenced the way we evaluate and pick our elected leaders. And he's not stopping. Even as I write, engineers at Facebook are working on new ways to get people to share information and photos. But Facebook isn't all technology. In an interview a few months ago, Zuckerberg talked about how human interactions -- people tagging and friending each other -- can be more powerful than algorithms when it comes to bringing people together.
I don't know if Facebook will even be around 10 years from now, but I do know that social networking -- however we define it -- will have an even bigger impact on our lives.
Larry Magid is co-author of A Parents' Guide to Facebook (a free 34 page booklet) and co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety organization that receives financial support from several technology companies including Facebook.
Follow Larry Magid on Twitter: www.twitter.com/larrymagid
David Meerman Scott: What Time Magazine Can Learn From Facebook
Andy Borowitz: In Controversial Decision, Time Calls Mark Zuckerberg a Person
Mark Zuckerberg: TIME Magazine's Person of the Year for 2010 ...
Mark Zuckerberg - Person of the Year 2010 - TIME
Or rather myspace, wikipedia or youtube might have made sense 5 years ago
As most everyone is saying, the obvious choice was Assange. Time clearly didn't choose him for political reasons.
Which is why I don't purchase Time magazine
wow, thats so cool......
That's true, and most interestingly was the reason given for the government's refusal, that it would be akin to cooperating with hostage-takers.
Not weeks later, Obama said of his 'deal' over retaining Bush's tax cuts for the richest 1%:
While it is impossible to only distinguish only one person as a person of the year, a more accurate reflection of the world in 2010 would have a list of the top ten most influential people of 2010. Instead of the politically correct and advertiser friendly version submitted by editors at Time Magazine, the following list comprises a more intellectual and realistic look at the most important people of 2010.
1. Julian Assange - Internet freedom advocate
2. Bradley Manning – whistle blower
3 Liu Xiaobao – 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Winner
4. Chilean Miners – dangers that blue collar workers face everyday
5. The Unemployed American – victim of broken economy and a declining world power
6 Steve Jobs – iPods, iPads, and iPhones- enough said
7. Independent Internet blogs
8 Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert – political humor at its best
9. Don’t touch my junk guy – the dangers of a country unable to stop perpetual war and a powerful central government
10. BP CEO Tony Hayward – the face of corporate negligence and arrogance
We need to look at face-value not face-book.
Did you see this about the 12-year old whose facebook site was infiltrated because he protested the closing of his youth center?
http://crooksandliars.com/node/42323/print
And by the way, Time magazine is irrelevant. Assange is The Man of The Year 2010 whatever they might dictate.
i just don't get the hype with facebook......but to each his own
Profit for marketers and FB. We should say that FB produces nothing worthwhile.