It's a fair question. Almost seven years ago, in February 2004, when Zuckerberg was a 19-year-old sophomore at Harvard, he started a Web service from his dorm. It was called Thefacebook.com, and it was billed as "an online directory that connects people through social networks at colleges." This year, Facebook — now minus the the — added its 550 millionth member. One out of every dozen people on the planet has a Facebook account. They speak 75 languages and collectively lavish more than 700 billion minutes on Facebook every month. Last month the site accounted for 1 out of 4 American page views. Its membership is currently growing at a rate of about 700,000 people a day.
What just happened? In less than seven years, Zuckerberg wired together a twelfth of humanity into a single network, thereby creating a social entity almost twice as large as the U.S. If Facebook were a country it would be the third largest, behind only China and India. It started out as a lark, a diversion, but it has turned into something real, something that has changed the way human beings relate to one another on a species-wide scale. We are now running our social lives through a for-profit network that, on paper at least, has made Zuckerberg a billionaire six times over.
Facebook has merged with the social fabric of American life, and not just American but human life: nearly half of all Americans have a Facebook account, but 70% of Facebook users live outside the U.S. It's a permanent fact of our global social reality. We have entered the Facebook age, and Mark Zuckerberg is the man who brought us here.
It's a pretty fair assessment on TIME's part. Facebook is ubiquitous (and a smash movie about Zuckerberg this year didn't hurt popularity either.) It seems that for now, Facebook has weathered privacy backlashes and productivity draining accusations as well as any major scandals or massive drama.
Zandarmom has a Facebook account, for crying out loud. That's real impact if you can get my mother to adapt to internet technology. It's gotten to the point where, like cell phones, e-mail, microwave ovens and flat-screen TVs, we take it for granted.
Also, it doesn't hurt that Zuckerberg is a far less political choice than Julian Assange, the Tea Party Voter, President Obama, or Moose Lady (and come to think of it, hasn't Zuckerberg made Sarah Palin's Presidency By Facebook possible in the first place? Thanks for that, Mark. Nice.)
Anyway, TIME has an excellent point. Zuckerberg really is the obvious choice this year.
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