Ten days ago, I wrote about the mistakenly-reported “fact” that five hundred million people are on Facebook. Despite what multiple media organizations report, the number is nowhere near correct.
Yet, in naming Mark Zuckerberg its Person Of The Year today, Time magazine helps propagate this hyperbole: “For connecting more than half-a-billion people and mapping the social relations among them (something that has never been done before)….”
Whether Zuckerberg deserves the title is arguable, but the lack of simple fact-checking by Time’s writers and editors is deplorable. Unless, like Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes,” they believe that because their own organization has a Facebook page (several in fact), it qualifies as “people.”
On the other hand, this means that you and Zuckerberg now have something in common — you’ve both been named Person Of The Year (you received the honor in 2006).