My first thought when I heard Time Magazine named Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg its 2010 Person of the Year was: "Shouldn't they have named him in 2008? What about Julian Assange?"Time giving Zuckerberg this honour signifies two things. The first is that this traditional media establishment is acknowledging Facebook's cultural impact. I think in a way it's Time saying, "Okay, social media has made us irrelevant. So, we might as well try to look hip and cool by parading social media's poster boy on our cover."
The second thing this signifies is that some traditional media outlets like Time are slow to recognize the cultural impact of social media. C'mon! Facebook entrenched itself in our cultural fabric years ago. If Time wanted to name Mark Zuckerberg its Person of the Year, it should have done so in 2008!
That's when Facebook began gaining many of its 500-million users. That's when most of us began to fear for our Facebook privacy. That's when Collins English Dictionary added "Facebook" to the dictionary both as a noun and a verb. By 2008, Zuckerberg had made much of his $6-billion fortune - half of which he recently pledged to charity.
If you're going to be late to the game, at least be the first publication to put Zuckerberg on the cover. But Time was beaten to the punch by Newsweek, which had the Facebook founder on its cover in 2007. Fortune also featured Zuckerberg on its cover this past autumn.I seriously think Time only gives a crap about Zuckerberg in 2010 because a major motion picture was made about him. Time is a news magazine, and it's showing it's not being very current right now. After all, we all know something isn't fresh anymore by the time Hollywood catches on to it.
Watch the trailer for The Social Network:
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