Time: Person of the Year – YOU

Time: Person of the Year - You

TIME Magazine has just named their Person of the Year and the winner is You. It seems that you, me & us control the information age which has resulted in a paradigm shift in the world as we know it. By You they give the award to anyone involved in user generated content – everything ranging from web 2.0, social media, blogging, video sharing etc etc etc. In actual sense with respect to blogging – the silent readers, the vocal commenters and all the bloggers equally share this award, as no one would have made it without the active participation from each individual person of this precious link.

It is undoubtedly surprising change to have moved away from the tradition of nominating an individual person and have taken the step of nominating the entire industry associated with the social networking hype. I think its a great award for us all as we have involved in the formation of a paradigm shift in the flow of information showing that common people like you and I can create change.

At the same time Problogger points out that this could very well be a Linkbaiting strategy (planned or unplanned) as it will create massive inbound links for TIME as the as the news spreads ensuring a rise in search engine ranking. With the announcement of the Person of the Year Time Magazine has already attracted over 17,000 incoming links jumping the average of 40 links per day to a whopping 160 in just one day (Technorati Chart) and it will continue to rise as the blogging community takes a bow for a job well done. Criticisms aside TIME defends its decision to honor the entire community of Citizen Media Journalists by stating

The “Great Man” theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that “the history of the world is but the biography of great men.” He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year.

To be sure, there are individuals we could blame for the many painful and disturbing things that happened in 2006. The conflict in Iraq only got bloodier and more entrenched. A vicious skirmish erupted between Israel and Lebanon. A war dragged on in Sudan. A tin-pot dictator in North Korea got the Bomb, and the President of Iran wants to go nuclear too. Meanwhile nobody fixed global warming, and Sony didn’t make enough PlayStation3s.

With this argument in mind the name of George Bush was probably the first one sent into the trash can as he can easily be held responsible for a lot of the global issues related to the US-key word “War on Terror” it actually turned out to be US’s Terrorrism on the War on Terror [sic], Bill Gates & Steve Jobs had no gadgetry device up their sleeves in 2006 to be able to uproot the entire community of Citizen Journalists. Global peace does not exist and Global Warming is a royal pain in the ass.

America’s poodle remains happy to be seen wagging his tail, and the occasional wipe of his ass after having been served up with a little too many whoopie cushions by the House of Commons. Pervaiz Musharraf could not be selected from Pakistan despite for his highly acclaimed tell all narration of Me, Myself and I autobiography as throughout 2006 he continued to receive plenty of sugar-coated “oblige … or else” beatings to help orchestrate the “US’s Terrorism on the War on Terror” , to the extent of having the blood of 80 innocent children who were alleged to be studying the mathematics of terrorism. Hugo Chavez could have also been a contender for this award with his “Sulphur Tainted Speech“, but I feel he would have definitely lost to many others, as actions generally speak louder then words (but were good words nevertheless)

Its without a doubt this years nomination serves as a slap in the face for all global leaders, for each and everyone of those leaders 2006 was nothing to write home about and they should hang their heads in shame to have wasted 365 days of doing nothing, its time someone steps up to the plate in 2007 and helps to improve the world around us. Batter Up Please!!!

Until then we, the citizen media, will enjoy our moment of glory.


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Comments

2 responses to “Time: Person of the Year – YOU”

  1. Rhea Avatar

    So it really is all about me. I mean, us.

  2. Adnan Siddiqi Avatar

    I am not surprised. I have seen his work and he really deserves it.