Mark Zuckerberg named 2010 Time Person of the Year

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been named the 2010 TIME Person of the Year. He is the second-youngest person to be chosen as Person of the Year. TIME stated in the announcement, "Zuckerberg wired together a twelfth of humanity into a single network, thereby creating a social entity almost twice as large as the U.S." and, "It started out as a lark, a diversion, but it has turned into something real, something that has changed the way human beings relate to one another on a species-wide scale. We are now running our social lives through a for-profit network that, on paper at least, has made Zuckerberg a billionaire six times over."

Zuckerberg announced that he had been chosen Person of the Year via a Facebook status update, stating, "Being named as TIME Person of the Year is a real honor 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."

Others considered for the 2010 Person of the Year award included Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan; the trapped miners in Chile; Julian Assange, the founder of whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks; and the Tea Party movement.