Facebook creator
Time magazine has named Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, as and their Person of the Year 2010. Zuckerberg, 26, is the second-youngest winner of the accolade. He won the award for connecting 12 percent of the planet on his social networking site. This is an impressive statistic considering the site has yet to make any impression in China. Mr Zuckerberg said on Wednesday, naturally on his Facebook page: "Being named as Time Person of the Year is a real honor and recognition of how our little team is building something that hundreds of millions of people want to use to make the world more open and connected. I'm happy to be a part of that." The young entrepreneur owns a quarter of the shares of Facebook and is a multi-billionaire. It was uncertain for a while who would win Time’s annual honour. Readers voting in the online poll chose the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange as the winner. However, Time panelists chose Mark Zuckerberg. Time’s editor Richard Stengel explained they chose Zuckerberg because he was a more positive figure than Assange and because he changed “how we all live our lives in ways that are innovative and even optimistic”. He wrote on Time’s website: "There is an erosion of trust in authority, a decentralizing of power and at the same time, perhaps, a greater faith in one another…" he said. Mr Stengel continued: “Zuckerberg sees the world as filled with potential friends.” Perhaps only the Facebook creator himself knows how much more he can do.
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