(Image Source: TIME)
 

BY MALLORY PERRYMAN

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RICK STENGEL (Time Magazine Managing Editor): “TIME Magazine’s person of the year for 2010 is Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, the CEO of Facebook.” (NBC)

Status update! Mark Zuckerberg is…person of the year. Like? Or is now a good time to invent the dislike button?  Some in the media say Zuck deserves it- others say- Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange- was robbed.
 
Assange was named runner-up. TIME Managing Editor Rick Stengel says, the men are two sides of the same coin.
 
RICK STENGEL (TIME Magazine Managing Editor): “They both say ‘Hey, we want transparency and openness.’ But what Assange is doing is he wants transparency to bring down institutions, to bring down governments, to level them. Zuckerberg wants transparency and openness to bring people together. Two different visions.”
 
But Computerworld’s Richi Jennings calls that comparison quote “blissful ignorance” and points out – Assange was the overwhelming winner of TIME’s online poll, where people- not editors-picked the winner.

“…what's the point of asking for votes, if you're going to go ahead and choose an unpopular choice? And why Zuckerberg in 2010? It's hardly a move demonstrating insight or foresight. Last year, or 2008, perhaps…”

So what’s changed for Zuck this year? For one thing- Facebook now has nearly 600 million users. If it were a country, it would be the third largest in the world.
 
But 2010 wasn’t all blue skies and butterflies for the tech giant. The Social Network hit theaters in October- a pretty successful movie that painted a not-so-pretty picture of Zuck.

PaidContent’s David Kaplan points out another 2010 change- Zuckerberg got a lot less awkward.

“More than anything else, this ...shows off how much more polished and media savvy the Facebook founder has become … (though favorable coverage can make anyone look good, of course).”

So Facebook was a big deal in 2010. But so was Wikileaks. Was TIME just playing it safe with Zuckerberg? CNN’s Don Lemon speculates: Assange may have been the riskier choice- but- remember this?
 
Behold…the 1938 person of the year…Adolf Hitler.
 
And lest we forget…1939’s winner: Joseph Stalin.
 
TIME’s Lev Grossman admits- it’s true- Person of the Year is not a prize.
 
LEV GROSSMAN (Tech Writer, TIME): “This is our best attempt to figure out who changed the world the most this year, who changed people’s lives the most this year, for better or for worse.”
 
Finally- a ZDNet blogger points out- TIME’s top choices have a long history of ticking people off.
 
“…ranting about Time’s Person of the Year is an annual ritual. In some respects, Zuckerberg taking the... crown is almost the same as when Time gave ‘You’ the crown in 2006.”

Yeah, that one was interesting.
 
Besides Assange, the Tea Party, the Chilean miners, and Hamid Karzai round out the runners up list. To take a look at all of TIME’s “people who mattered”, click here.

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