Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been crowned as Time magazine's person of 2010.
Zuckerberg, who gained additional notoriety this year by being the main character of the film The Social Network now also has the honour of being Time magazine's annual Person of the Year, the person the leading US magazine believes had the most influence on events in 2010.
Zuckerberg and Assange
The 26-year-old billionaire was joined on Time's listing of influencers this year by Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange who won a Time readers' poll on 2010's most influential person.
Time's annual list feature has been a fixture since the 1920s, with the winner appearing on the cover of one of the world's most influential magazines.
Managing editor Richard Stengel said that Facebook is "transforming the way we live our lives every day" with over 500 million users worldwide and around 1,700 full-time staff.
'Our little team'
Zuckerberg said the award was "a real honour and recognition of how our little team is building something that hundreds of millions of people want to use to make the world more open and connected. I'm happy to be a part of that."
The Facebook founder is estimated to be worth $6.9bn (£4.4bn) and is one of the richest men in the US, following Bill Gates' example of giving away much of his wealth to charity.
The Person of the Year award used to be called the 'Man of the Year' award, back in Time's pre-feminist days.
Facebook is 'best place to work'
In other Facebook news, Zuckerberg's company has also been named the best place to work in a new survey by a leading NEW YORKcareer website report published this week.
Facebook edged ahead of Southwest Airlines and management consultants firm Bain & Company on the 'best companies to work for' list compiled by Glassdoor.
That survey showed that employees don't like poor communication in a company, and really like to work for companies that have "a very solid and distinct company culture."
Via Reuters
