“For connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is TIME’s 2010 Person of the Year”, so says the introduction to the announcement of Facebook’s 26-year old founder being chosen as the Person of the Year.

Explaining the choice, Rick Stengel, Time Magazine’s managing editor writes, “More than anyone else on the world stage, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is at the center of these changes. Born in 1984, the same year the Macintosh computer was launched, he is both a product of his generation and an architect of it. The social-networking platform he invented is closing in on 600 million users. In a single day, about a billion new pieces of content are posted on Facebook. It is the connective tissue for nearly a tenth of the planet. Facebook is now the third largest country on earth and surely has more information about its citizens than any government does. Zuckerberg, a Harvard dropout, is its T-shirt-wearing head of state.

“Person of the Year is not and never has been an honor. It is a recognition of the power of individuals to shape our world. For connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them (something that has never been done before); for creating a new system of exchanging information that has become both indispensable and sometimes a little scary; and finally, for changing how we all live our lives in ways that are innovative and even optimistic, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is TIME’s 2010 Person of the Year.”

Whether the choice is apt or not is debatable, as reader comments on various news sites show. The most common refrain seems to be that Time has gone for a softer and more convenient option by choosing Zuckerberg ahead of Julian Assange. What is not debatable is the power of Facebook in connecting people, bridging geographies and generations and influencing how people interact with one another (for better or for worse). The recognition for Zuckerberg reinforces what we have been made to realize in the last couple of years: social media is pervasive; and as marketers, you can’t afford to ignore a medium that is the virtual residence of more than half a billion people.

In the video interview with Stengel, Zuckerberg gives a couple of valuable lessons for digital marketers and aspiring entrepreneurs. He talks about the power of the Internet to spread information about a good product quickly- which is what marketers should leverage- and how a business is created out of focusing on creating a great product/service that delivers great value.

“One of the things that’s amazing about the Internet is that if you build something good, that is a service that’s valuable for people, it can spread very quickly and if you create value for other people, then you might be able to realize a portion of that value yourself. ……Everyday we come in and just try to build the best product,” says Zuckerberg.