Mark Zuckerberg Named TIME’s 2010 Person of the Year

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2036683,00.html

by ssclafani • 16 years ago

118 116 16 years ago

time.com

rbanffy2• 16 years ago

Proving once and for all that Huxley is better than Orwell...

ra2• 16 years ago

you said it.

napierzaza3• 16 years ago

I didn't expect that comment, but it's so true. If it was a vote for the most influential person (is it?) basically people would be voting for themselves.

I still don't get why people give Zuck all the credit. And I'm not talking about the creation myth about the company. I'm just saying that for a long time his company has probably not been steered by a 20 year-old. These days he's likely been coached just to not come off as a robot. But business-wise I don't get the impression it's all him either.

vidar• 16 years ago

They give him all the credit because that is the story given by FB, its a large part of their marketing strategy.

seanalltogether• 16 years ago

You could apply that statement to the founder of most companies but it doesn't make it true. A good founder knows how to focus their talents, not control the entire chain. However that doesn't mean they aren't one of the most important links in that chain.

brown9-22• 16 years ago

"has probably not been steered by a 20 year-old", "he's likely been coached just to not come off as a robot"

How much of this is speculation and how much of this is fact?

Either way, it's not like having advisors or help makes someone's accomplishments important. Presidents have armies of staff, all CEO's have advisors and aides and coaches, and Assange doesn't run wikileaks alone.

code_duck5• 16 years ago

Millions of dollars in Accel/In-Q-Tel money doesn't come with no strings attached, after all.

A business the size of Facebook or even 2% the size can't all be the work of one person, of course. They like to make it seem that way for marketing purposes. Why they don't choose someone less creepy, I"m not sure. I guess like a lot of other douchebag founders, Zuckerberg stays in the limelight to feed his ego.

random42• 16 years ago

Julian Assange would disagree!?

mikedmiked2• 16 years ago

Brilliant!

I am ashamed to say that I did not understand this reference at first. To anybody else who did not understand: http://www.prosebeforehos.com/image-of-the-day/08/24/huxley-...

eogas• 16 years ago

Zuckerberg was born in 1984....coincidence?

DupDetector3• 16 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2003942 - readwriteweb.com - no comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2001882 - time.com - no comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1990612 - time.com - 1 comment

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1975517 - time.com - no comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1968958 - time.com - no comments

Edited to add comment count in response to replies below.

steveklabnik2• 16 years ago

Novelty accounts? In my Hacker News?

RiderOfGiraffes, is that you? If not, I suggest that you do the same as he; pointing people to the stories that have tons of comments on them. In this case, none really do yet, so maybe a note about that?

DupDetector3• 16 years ago

It's semi-automated scripting from RoG. I'm trying to work out the most useful method(s) of detecting duplicates and cross-referencing. In this case I didn't put the number of comments, and marked the referenced items as "related". Compare with:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2005790

and

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2004764

where one is marked strictly as a duplicate, the other lists related, along with a note of how many comments.

I'm working on this. There's a sort-of A/B testing, since I'm able to go back and see which cross-references get up-votes, and which get down-votes. Currently I'm getting precious little of either.

duck• 16 years ago

Is it really a dup if there is no comments in any of them?

ra2• 16 years ago

I'm kinda sad Assange didn't win

pablohoffman• 16 years ago

Feeling sad would imply that you hold some respect to the judges that decided who won, but I think Time magazine just lost the respect of many readers. I'm kinda sad for them, not for Assange.

mikedmiked2• 16 years ago

What is everyone's opinion on the Chilean Miners getting a runner up place (as opposed to none)? I was a bit surprised. It is incredible and inspiring that they survived, and the feats of engineering required to save them were remarkable (although those people aren't receiving an award), but do you think even they feel they should be runners up to this prize?

It was fortunate that they survived, and they did what anybody in their position would by trying to stay calm and hold out, but their circumstances were not that unique. In West Virginia in April this year 29 miners died, but that is "old news" now to everybody except those in the immediate area. How many people are tortured, raped, wrongfully imprisoned annually? It is horrible but I'd rather suffer being in a dark, hot and humid mine for a few months and escape a hero and celebrity (with book deals) than be tortured or raped continuously, with nobody fighting to get me out of that situation.

Maybe I am missing the point of the prize; which is to reward media attention. In which case why not reward X Factor, American Idol or whatever winners instead? Far more people know them.

mseebach3• 16 years ago

I don't even know about inspiring. It's just accident-porn, inflated by a publicity-craving Chilean government and blow way out of proportions by an all too willing international press.

setori88• 16 years ago

Times had better prepare for a DDOS.

esponapule• 16 years ago

the legion of unknown has moved on to operation paperstorm

lwhi3• 16 years ago

Facebook isn't a 2010 phenomenon.

2010 was the year Wikileaks changed the world.

hexis• 16 years ago

Yes, but in 2010 Facebook had a movie. No doubt Assange will be Man of the Year in 2012, when they make a movie about him.

ugh4• 16 years ago

Wikileaks is grade A movie material, by the way. Will be nice to see who picks that up.

jasonlotito4• 16 years ago

What has changed with the Wikileaks prior to the last set?

Wikileaks is also not just a 2010 phenom.

lwhi3• 16 years ago

I believe Wikileaks reached 'climax' (for want of a better word) in 2010.

linhir3• 16 years ago

Can someone explain to me how Wikileaks changed the world? I'm not trying to be provocative, but seriously what is all that different now than it was two months ago?

lwhi3• 16 years ago

When Google hit the world stage, arguably the concept of personal privacy became null and void.

When Wikileaks hit the world stage, arguably the concept of a nation state's right to privacy became null and void.

Because some people (Assange and others) have dared to release these documents into the public domain, a radical precedent has been set.

I believe it will be very difficult to go back to a time where governmental secrecy is an unchallenged aspect of modern life.

zeemonkee2• 16 years ago

The technology is nothing new, I'd grant you.

However, in historical context, Wikileaks is (very likely) revolutionary.

Wikileaks challenges the whole concept of closed government. Governments have assumed that they can keep secrets, whether out of national or selfish interest. Suddenly that's not true any more. Any secret will eventually become public. And there's little you can do - national newspapers and TV stations can be dealt with, but how can you shut down a server on the other side of the world ? And if you do, so what ? The secrets are on a million sites and torrents.

For good or ill, this changes the way governments, especially democratic governments, do business. If you know that your innermost secrets will be revealed, not in 40 years time but in tomorrow's evening news, how do you conduct affairs of state ?

Maybe this is something we've all realized for a long time, but only now, it appears, do governments realize the full implications of what "World Wide Web" really means.

alexdias• 16 years ago

As an example, the President of the Portuguese Republic said this to the USA Ambassador: "I met Chavez, and he's a crazy man, but we have 100,000 portuguese on Venezuela".

That's something that he definitely (spelling?) won't say again.

(Although this example is more of a problem with information leakage and not Wikileaks itself, Wikileaks greatly increased the easiness of acessing leaked documents, by allowing anyone with an internet connection to see them and analyse them for themselves, instead of waiting for the media)

lubos5• 16 years ago

Obviously Assange should be the person of the year. Although I personally dislike him for being such a popularity whore, it's obvious Time magazine has been pressured to choose someone less controversial.

But what happened to original principles of this award? Hitler was the person of the year for 1938. This award went always to the person with the highest impact on news. What the heck happened this year? Time magazine is becoming irrelevant.

ThomPete• 16 years ago

This idea of him being a popularity whore, where do you have that from?

cagenut• 16 years ago

You see this everywhere now. People get to act like they're being reasonable compromising middle ground moderates by opening up with a personal swipe against Assange and then following up with a vague statement of support for what wikileaks does.

lhnz• 16 years ago

Well, he has got loads of people to persecute him for a rape he probably didn't commit, isn't this what popularity whores do all the time for a little bit of fun. Righttttt?

ugh4• 16 years ago

You don’t even have to go back to Hitler and Stalin. Vladimir Putin (Person of the Year in 2007) was an at least as ambiguous Person of the Year as Assange would be.

(I’m not sure about your conspiracy theory, though.)

loewenskind• 16 years ago

Can we stop throwing around terms like "conspiracy theory" in an attempt to kill discussion?

ErrantX• 16 years ago

He made readers choice by a decent margin, which was not unexpected TBH.

(Although weirdly it's not very obvious from the main "100" landing page)

rmc2• 16 years ago

Hitler was the person of the year for 1938

Some other notable choices:

Joseph Stalin, 1939 Ayatollah Khomeini, 1979

faramarz• 16 years ago

I have the the original Khomeini copy. It's a gem. The articles inside are well worth the read compared to what we know today as facts regarding the US/CIA involvement.

maurits• 16 years ago

it's obvious Time magazine has been pressured to choose someone less controversial

I feel that a far more gloomy and more likely scenario is that companies like Time, Mastercard, etc etc have not been pressured significantly or at all by government

The older you get, the more responsibilities and (financial) risk you have, the harder it becomes to think outside the box and swim upstream. I think it is perfectly plausible that people in their position decided on there own that supporting Assange was a step to far into a brave new world :-)

lubos5• 16 years ago

according to Time Magazine, the person of the year title goes to the person "for better or for worse, ...has done the most to influence the events of the year."

endtime• 16 years ago

Or perhaps they just genuinely don't like the guy. They're all American companies run by American people, and Assange clearly has an agenda which does not include the interests of the US.

mseebach3• 16 years ago

"Obvious" doesn't mean what you think it does.

I don't know what Zuckerberg is doing there, but let's hold off on peddling completely unfounded conspiracy theories. More likely, and less unfounded: Old-style news organizations are scared positively pantless by the fact that a blogger (He's a guy with a computer, if that's not a blogger, WHAT IS!?) was in charge of not just one, but quite a few, of the top news stories this year.

enry_straker• 16 years ago

"blogger" doesn't mean what you think it does.

zck• 16 years ago

A blogger is a person who writes a blog. What's Zuckerberg's blog? (hint: Facebook is not a blog. Even if it was, Zuckerberg would have to write blog entries on it for even some part of Facebook to count as his blog)

crocowhile• 16 years ago

>He's a guy with a computer, if that's not a blogger, WHAT IS!?)

Wut?

mlinsey• 16 years ago

Who knows what this decision will look like ten years from now - one can imagine Zuckerberg looking like a pretty plausible choice.

However, I agree that the trend you're talking about definitely exists. The most egregious recent example is Rudy Giuliani instead of Osama bin Laden in 2001, a decision which looks even stranger today than it did nine years ago.

cabalamat• 16 years ago

> one can imagine Zuckerberg looking like a pretty plausible choice

I agree. Facebook is after all the second most popular website.

> The most egregious recent example is Rudy Giuliani instead of Osama bin Laden in 2001

Indeed. They chickened out.

napierzaza3• 16 years ago

Person of the YEAR. Not "person of the year-looking-back-25-years-from-now"

amalcon2• 16 years ago

Wikileaks only really hit the mainstream news less than a month ago. They've obviously been putting this piece together for longer than that. A runner-up article, on the other hand, can be pasted together pretty quickly.

I wouldn't assume malice just yet.

lubos5• 16 years ago

They hit mainstream already in April when they leaked Baghdad airstrike video.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_published_by_WikiLe...

aewaters• 16 years ago

The events surrounding Wikileaks are the ones that are going to go on to define the next decade and influence the future of the internet. Their choice is an easy, popularist one that avoids any political controversy in the USA

HaloZero• 16 years ago

Time magazine lost large amounts of subscriptions after Khomeini won in 1979, that's what happened.

maigret• 16 years ago

Of course there is no objective choice on that, but to give a bit of counterweight to that, I would note that Assange didn't leaked the information. He published it. He was not the one risking prison for getting the data out of the US network. Also the mainstream don't care that much about Assange like the geeks & journalists do. Most people don't care about the cables either.

Zuckerberg, though, created a tool that is used by many many people, and impacts much there daily life and the way they interact together. Facebook brought social networks to the masses.

Assange is in the runner-up, and history will tell what the right choice was.

Also finally, I would have expected the crowd here to be a bit more happy to see a geek - and startup founder - make the headline.

jackowayed• 16 years ago

Given that the article is published already,it's quite possible that they made the decision before cablegate. Plus it's supposed to be for the year as a whole. While Assange has released other stuff this year (collateral murder, etc), until cablegate, a pretty small segment of the population knew about Wikileaks

IsaacL• 16 years ago

It seems like I'm in a minority, but I don't think there's anything wrong with choosing Zuckerberg over Assange - Facebook has been hugely influential on society, in a way that Wikileaks has so far only promised to be. (I'm not saying that Wikileaks doesn't herald some kind of revolution, but said revolution hasn't happened yet IMO).

I was going to draw parallels to Bill Gates getting the award, though it turns out that was in the '00s, for his philanthropy, not in the '80s for Microsoft. The '82 award to "The Computer" and '06 award to "You" are in the same vein, though (even if the second one was a bit silly).

salemh• 16 years ago

Facebook has, this year however, become a mega force, ingrained in society, and pushing to become an all encompassing layer OVER all of reality.

I would say WikiLeaks should be "named" next year (depending on whether anything actually changes / consequences are met with the disclosures). Currently WikiLeaks is in its "infancy" of impact / effect.

steveklabnik2• 16 years ago

Note that this is who was named by the editors, not who won the "Reader's Choice": http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2...

"though TIME's editors who choose the actual Person of the Year reserve the right to disagree"

nightlifelover• 16 years ago

Facebook is sooo 2009, time.com seems to just have no balls to make Assange the person of the year.

franze• 16 years ago

spineless

maguay• 16 years ago

Single-page version (best for Instapaper or just reading online period) - http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/printout/0,29239,...

palewery• 16 years ago

They are trying to sell magazines. If they did Assange a "cancel your subscription to terrorist magazine" campaign would be started by Fox News.

david927• 16 years ago

In other news, Time magazine announced a new version aimed at adults:

http://www.theonion.com/video/time-announces-new-version-of-...

Synaesthesia• 16 years ago

Yeah. Time is an infotainment magazine.

InclinedPlane• 16 years ago

I saw that a while ago. This is why The Onion is so good, sometimes when they hit an issue they knock it out of the park in a way that nobody else can.

Our news media, in all forms, has become increasingly infotainment for quite some time now.

wildmXranat• 16 years ago

My personal stance in refusing to read that drivel stands as personal protest. What is TIME turning into anyway, Teen Idol Mania Essays? Meh.

untamedmedley• 16 years ago

While this isn't the first time wikileaks has been in the news, am I the only one that sees a problem with people's seeming interest in awarding this to whatever person is in the news closest to the time of the reveal?

Wikileaks has been in the public conscious for maybe a month (combined) this entire year. Regardless of your politics, you have to admit the Tea Party has been ever-present and incredibly effective at changing the makeup of our government and getting their message out. I don't see how wikileaks has that same (perceived) effect on everyday Americans' lives.

bryanwb• 16 years ago

The guy deserves it. He created a tool that a lot of people find very useful. I don't use it myself but I recognize how valuable it is to others.

I still haven't seen any significant revelations come out of wikileaks, so I think they were right to not pick Assange

ffffruit2• 16 years ago

He created it in 2004. The only thing FB received during 2010 was criticism about the way they handle data.

kenjackson• 16 years ago

Here's a question... if there was no Facebook vs if there was no Wikileaks, which would impact the world the most now and going forward?

If there's no Facebook I honestly don't think the world changes all that much. People are on MySpace, and some of the other social networks are more popular. 10 years down the line, I don't think the world looks noticeably different. Whereas I think with Wikileaks the whole dynamics of US foreign relations will change.

Both are speculative, but I do think that Wikileaks is more impactful than Facebook. With that said,if they gave the award to "the social network", I'd be in more agreement.

jamesbressi• 16 years ago

Great choice, forget about that Nobel Peace prize guy who is locked up for freedom of thought and speech or something about democracy... It's a hard name to remember anyway.

code_duck5• 16 years ago

Nice contrast, huh? Instead of some guy who fights for freedom and democracy and symbolizes a struggle against a tyrannical regime, let's choose some smug rich punk who is working with the government to catalog info about every citizen in the US.

ffffruit2• 16 years ago

Ironic if you think of how much Facebook has been criticised this year with regards to its privacy settings and data governance tactics.

invisible• 16 years ago

I am sure TIME had this picked out by October at the latest - it just had to go through editing, proof-reading, printing, etc. for a while and they kind of missed Wikileaks in the process. While I think it's not an excuse, it was probably chosen before Wikileaks released even one of the cables that are a big deal now.

ZachPruckowski• 16 years ago

The problem is that they specifically made it sound like it was a late-breaking decision in their wording on the online poll and elsewhere.

binarray2000• 16 years ago

While I have hoped that Julian will win this one I'm happy that both the winner Zuckerberg and runner-up Assange are one:

Hackers.

to• 16 years ago

thats it. the time is dead to me. i can take amazon, paypal etc. because those are companies and heck they can kick whoever they want, its their business. but when a magazine ignores its readers votes... well i guess the time just adjusted to its country. democracy adieau, long live the republic.

mfukar• 16 years ago

I totally agree with this. Farmville is such a game-changer. Distributing whistleblower messages that expose corruption doesn't bear any significance in front of Facebook's vision of making everybody friends. <3

moontear• 16 years ago

Wait?! Time's person of the year WAS Julian Assange as decided by the online community. TIME just chose to make Mark Zuckerberg the person of the year. In their words "though TIME's editors who choose the actual Person of the Year reserve the right to disagree".

Julian Assange led the vote by ~ 150000 votes.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2...

ctice• 16 years ago

“Assange won our poll by a great margin — but of course, Lady Gaga was No. 2. We take all that into account.”

kunjaan• 16 years ago

Why hold these polls if you are going to discredit it yourself and put such snide remarks?

But anyway does anyone even read Time here in US?

spot• 16 years ago

Just like Time to suck up to power instead of those who challenge it.

Mark totally deserves this.... but not this year. After the IPO.

huherto• 16 years ago

Shouldn't the credit go to the soldier who leaked the documents (I am ashame don't even know his name). He is the one who is going to spend his life in prison.

code_duck5• 16 years ago

Yeah, there's a nice story out about Bradley Manning's less than hospitable confinement conditions. I'm sure they're getting the biting dogs, exotic chemicals, sexual assault team and waterboard ready for Assange.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/14...

Love how they're dosing him with antidepressants.

SwaroopH• 16 years ago

Apparently, concentration camps are not evil when compared to a whistleblower website. Enough said.

I feel sorry for Zuck though.

code_duck5• 16 years ago

What a joke. If I had any respect left for institutions like time, I'd be shedding it.

Facebook is a new, proprietary way for people to do what they were going to do on the internet already, without Facebook. I don't feel that it has been influential on society as a whole - the entire electronics revolution has.

I'd rather see Steve up here with an iPad, personally. Or perhaps someone who has influenced the actual direction of history.

Nice safe choice for Time, huh? Underscores their commitment to undermining the entire world of journalism by making news as bland and irrelevant as possible.

fjania• 16 years ago

Big deal. I was Time's person of the year back in 2006 - http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00....

Mark Zuckerberg Named TIME’s 2010 Person of the Year

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