The ballots have been cast, the votes have been counted, the results are in, and once again, I was robbed. Instead of being named Time's Person of the Year, they gave it to that sweaty creep Zuckerberg.
Bitter? Moi? OK, maybe a little. I mean what has he done, besides create a social networking platform that everyone and their dog now uses? I now cannot leave the house without hearing somebody somewhere talking about Facebook -- in cafes, hardware stores, movie theaters, what have you. And it's almost always someone who'd have a hard time picking any other website out of a police lineup.
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Facebook is now the world's third most populous nation, behind China and India. (Soon tech companies will start opening support call centers there.) Facebook is responsible for more people hooking up with their old high school sweethearts than too many tequila shooters at your 20th reunion; it's also at least partly responsible for one in five divorces, as well as a rise in sexually transmitted diseases in Britain, according to one U.K. researcher (those last two facts might be related).
Per Time mag:
One out of every dozen people on the planet has a Facebook account. They speak 75 languages and collectively lavish more than 700 billion minutes on Facebook every month. Last month the site accounted for 1 out of 4 American page views. Its membership is currently growing at a rate of about 700,000 people a day.
It is no longer possible to just quietly like something any more; now we must Like it and tell all 4,987 of our closest personal friends.
In short, Facebook has changed most of our lives -- even those of people who will invariably append a comment to the end of this blog bragging about how they've never been on Facebook (if only because the existence of Facebook has compelled them to point that out).
