Twittersphere Battle Is Still On: Zuckerberg vs. Assange
The magazine has been printed, but people are still taking sides on whether Time magazine should have named the Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg as its Person of the Year, or Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. Boy wonder, or enfant terrible?
Time makes a good case for Zuckerberg. But is he influential or convenient? Facebook has become uber-ubiquitous in no time, and helped make social media the killer app for all society. Or has it? Will Facebook withstand a challenge from whatever comes next?
Assange is clearly an inspiration in the art of the cyber-Molotov cocktail. Just as 9/11 showed the world an entirely new kind of vulnerability to attack, Assange showing how much easier and how much more powerful it is to release secrets than it is to release explosives. Zuckerberg may be peaking as Assange is getting started. The wisest call may be a tweet from @SparxNet: Person Of The Year: Assange or Zuckerberg? I'd have awarded it jointly to both.
Let's look back a bit. Remember Harlow Herbert Curtice? He was Time's 1955 Man (sic) Of The Year, as head of General Motors. Curtice probably made sense in the era when people actually thought that what was good for General Motors was good for the USA. ButTime has been smarter in choosing world leaders -- good guys and bad ones -- than finding captains of industry who have "for better or worse, most influenced events in the preceding year."
Charles Lindbergh was the first MoTY in 1927, but the 2nd and 3d were industry titans (Chrysler and RCA). Time then switched its focus to government, picking bold-faced people still recognizable by last name only: Churchill, Hitler, Gandhi, Stalin (twice). You saw the first CEO-as-rock-stars in the 1990s, when Ted Turner became the first corporate executive named since Curtice 35 years earlier. The MoTYs immediately before and after him were U.S. presidents.
If you're looking for irrefutable numbers, Facebook's user community of half a billion is its big strength. But Facebook has done a better job of integrating itself into other websites than it has in making itself indispensable to the people who use it. It's great to be able to share an article like this one with friends with a click. (Hint!) But Facebook's failure to address the essential issue of stickiness makes it easier for the next Zuckerberg to become the next Zuckerberg-by making it possible to search and keep whatever you post or "like." Facebook is free, which is part of its appeal. But that also makes it easier for users to under-value, and to leave. It's open to everyone, also both an advantage and disadvantage. Facebook fatigue has set in even for some people who are happy to hear from 8th grade crushes and parents who want to horn in on their carpool.
Zuckerberg's own great strength is that he isn't greedy. He hasn't made dumb choices in order to cash out. But if he doesn't want to evoke the same "who?" as Harlow Herbert Curtice in a few decades, he should look at the arc of the General Motors story: from all-powerful to sclerotic. (Jury out now.) Zuckerberg has of course taken a cue from the most recent technology CEO to be a PoTY, Bill Gates, who is building a second reputation--along with Bono, Buffett and others--not for what he achieved at the office but for what he contributed to the world. Zuckerberg signed on to the Giving Pledge last week. He's young. Maybe he'll be the first PoTY to make it to the cover twice.
Nell Minow, dubbed "queen of good corporate governance" by BusinessWeek, is a member of the board of GovernanceMetrics International (formerly The Corporate Library, which she co-founded).
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