I wish I could take credit for today’s blog post, but I’m only regurgitating what David Kirkpatric (former technology writer for Fortune Magazine and author of The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World) posted today in The Daily Beast.
10 Reasons Mark Zuckerberg
is Time Magazine’s Person of the Year
- Facebook is the fastest growing company in history, surpassing Google as the web’s top destination.
- Facebook was created by Zuckerberg.
- Facebook is transforming lives daily in about 100 languages
- This is a fundamentally new form of communication. In every medium that preceded it, we “sent” a message to another person—telegram, phone call, email, text. But on Facebook you merely do something. The software figures out who sees it. It is the first time real automation has come to mass human communication.
- Zuckerberg, as CEO, has total control over the evolution of Facebook. He controls three of five board seats, and cannot be dislodged or overruled. Facebook really is a reflection of his will and his vision.
- His commitment to the service over his own short-term self-interest was proven in late 2007 when he turned down an offer from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to buy Facebook for $15 billion.
- With a personal net worth of around $10 billion, based on the price of recent sales of Facebook stock in private markets (the company is not yet public), his personal business achievement surpasses anyone his age, ever.
- Facebook has enormous impact in diverse realms—including politics, media, marketing, privacy, our sense of identity, and our definition of friendship.
- Facebook’s impact on the Internet has continued to broaden even outside its own servers. Over 2 million Web sites now use various aspects of Facebook’s software platform, aiming to capture some of the viral communications power that Facebook uniquely makes possible. These platform tools include the “like” button now increasingly ubiquitous across the Web.
- Zuckerberg pushes Facebook to continually change and improve its product, and that has kept it growing and relevant.
And I think he’s fun to watch on Television!
And here’s a link to another great post about Mark Zuckerberg and Time Magazine from David Meerman Scott’s blog.
