Facebook founder named Time's 'person of year'

New York: Time magazine named Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg its "person of the year" Wednesday, beating out a push by readers of the magazine for WikiLeaks maestro Julian Assange to take the honour.

Zuckerberg, only 26, is the second youngest person named to the cover of Time's ritual annual.

Managing editor Richard Stengel said Zuckerberg's social networking service was "transforming the way we live our lives every day." 

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke received the honour last year. The 2008 winner was then-President-elect Barack Obama. The 2007 winner was Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Other previous winners have included Bono, President George W. Bush, and Amazon.com CEO and founder Jeff Bezos.

Pledge to help

Earlier this month, the young billionaire Zuckerberg, including Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, pledged to give away at least half of his fortune in a philanthropic campaign led by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

A total of 57 billionaires now have joined The Giving Pledge, which was launched by Microsoft founder Gates and investor Buffett in June.

"People wait until late in their career to give back. But why wait when there is so much to be done?" said Zuckerberg, who gave $100 (Dh367) million in September to the beleaguered public schools of Newark, New Jersey.

"With a generation of younger folks who have thrived on the success of their companies, there is a big opportunity for many of us to give back earlier in our lifetime and see the impact of our philanthropic efforts," he said.

The Social Network

Zuckerberg is a 26-year-old billionaire who now oversees an empire with profits of more than $800 million a year.

His success story was recently made into a film called The Social Network, a film about Facebook.

The Social Network was at the top of the American box-office charts when it opened this year. Which is a remarkable achievement for a film that is concerned with the seemingly uncinematic real-life story of how a nerdy college student came up with an idea for a website.