Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is Time Magazine's 'Person of the Year'

by Steven Mostyn - Dec 16 2010, 06:12

Already firmly in the public eye thanks to being the focus of critically acclaimed Hollywood movie ‘The Social Network’, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has now been named as Time Magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’.

Responsible for bringing social networking to the masses, Facebook has grown to become an Internet powerhouse since Zuckerberg unveiled it in 2004. This is thanks, in no small part, to its value as a free communications tool, its massive selection of software applications, and a global user base spanning more than 550,000 million people.

“[Facebook] is changing in fundamental ways the way we interact with each other, the way in which we relate to each other, the way that we talk to each other,” said Michael Elliott, deputy managing editor of Time during an AP interview.

At just 26 years of age, Zuckerberg becomes the second youngest recipient of Time’s ‘Person of the Year’ award. Groundbreaking American aviator Charles Lindbergh remains the youngest recipient after being acknowledged as ‘Man of the Year’ back in 1927 at the tender age of just 25.

During that year, Lindbergh shot to worldwide fame after he successfully completed a non-stop flight from New York to Paris aboard his single-seat, single-engine monoplane Spirit of St. Louis.

Time Magazine issues its accolade to the ‘person or thing’ its editors consider to have most influenced popular culture or the news (for better or for worse) during the past 12 months.

Previous winners include the likes of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt (three times), Adolf Hitler, Queen Elizabeth II, Rudolph Giuliani, and Albert Einstein (as ‘Person of the Century’)

According to Time, other people and events considered for the 2010 award included the mine rescue in Chile, the Tea Party, the WikiLeaks scandal, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

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