A shocked and spotty Mark Zuckerberg graces the cover of the latest Time magazine as 2010’s Person of the Year. Facebook founder Zuckerberg joins a list that includes Vladimir Putin, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Richard Nixon (who won two years in a row) and, in a quirky attempt to reflect a change away from the “Great Man” version of history, you.
In a year when Facebook came under greater scrutiny and the subject of the film The Social Network, Zuckerberg’s win seems to be about previous achievements. Time’s salute reads: “In less than 7 years, Zuckerberg wired together a 12th of humanity into a single network, thereby creating a social entity almost twice as large as the US.”
On the runners-up list, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was called a “cypherpunk” who “wrought deep disruptions in the marketplace of state power”. Trapped Chilean miners and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai were also wooden spooners for Person of the Year 2010.