The Philippine Online Chronicles

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2010.

According to the magazine's website, Zuckerberg "enabled a twelfth of humanity into a single network." Combining the current number of Facebook accounts worldwide, Time said that it is almost twice as large as the total population of the United States.

The networking site's CEO received the citation for reportedly connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them. He was also cited for creating "a new way of exchanging information thereby changing the way people live."

“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,” said Lev Grosman, a writer for the magazine.

The BBC news agency reported that Zuckerberg was glad when he learned of Time's recognition. He was quoted saying that the award was “a real honor and recognition of how our little team is building something that hundreds of people want to use to make the world more open and connected.”

Facebook has also made Zuckerberg into one of the richest people in the US, with USD6.9 billion (P304.59 billion) in assets.

From Harvard to global

Facebook has had a checkered past, being accused of breaching users' privacy, among other things. Despite these issues, however, it eventually outgrew MySpace and Twitter in terms of user population. Currently, Facebook has 550 million users around the world, with some 700,000 new accounts created daily.

In the Philippines, there are 19,227,280 existing Facebook accounts, according to Socialbakers (formerly Facebakers), a social networking statistics website. Last week alone, an additional 325,380 Filipinos have created an account, posting a 1.69 percent growth.

The website also showed that some 19.25 percent of the Philippine population owns a Facebook page, while the country is noted as the sixth nation in the world with the most number of Facebook users.

Assange preferred by many

Despite the Times' announcement however, BBC reported that according to the readers' poll, more than 382,000 wanted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be Person of the Year, more than those who opted for Turkish prime minister Recep Erdogan and pop icon Lady Gaga.

Zuckerberg only landed at tenth place, reportedly obtaining less than 20,000 votes. Readers at mashable.com also said that Assange should have been recognized as the Person of the Year instead of Zuckerberg.

“Making it easier for people to avoid each other and talk online is not something that should make you 'Person of the Year'”, a certain Coty01 said.

A user named imbenzene said, “[it] was supposed to be Assange, not him (Zuckerberg)- who is nothing but a huge son of probability.”

On the Time website itself, some commenters are in apparent dismay over the announcement.

“How pathetic. Assange is relevant. Zuckerberg is like picking American Idol—nothing but 'bread and circuses'. Congratulations, Time, we need another version of Faux News. NOT!” says one jw.

A commenter named California says, “Julian Assange is the true Person of the year according to the poll that Time allowed the people to vote on. If Zuckerberg had any scr*te he would acknowledge that,” adding that it was “shameful”.