The 26-year old CEO of Facebook (a private company) has been named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2010. A major motion picture came out this year on the founding of Facebook and the intrigue that took place between Zuckerberg and a pair of his former colleagues from Harvard university, where Zuckerberg earned his B.S. degree in computer science. And 60 minutes recently ran a feature on Zuckerberg and the culture/community at Facebook, along with the growing rivalry between Facebook and Google for top talent in the Palo Alto, CA area. In the feature Zuckerberg also takes issue with some of the narrative in the film The Social Network.
Facebook currently boosts 500 million users, who reportedly spend an average of 55 minutes a day on the social media site. With those figures, it’s not surprising that many are citing Facebook as among the contributors of a growing narcissism in our culture, particularly among young adults. To his credit, Zuckerberg, with a net worth of about 6.9 billion dollars, appears to be joining the philanthropic community led by the likes of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates.
I thought the 60 minutes feature was interesting: