Time Person of the Year
KING: A 26-year-old chief executive who runs a community of more than a half billion people is "TIME's" "Person of the Year". The magazine chose Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg because of his role in reinventing how we communicate and in growing the social network platform into what would qualify as the third largest country on earth. So why did Zuckerberg get the nod over, say WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange or the Tea Party? Let's ask "TIME" assistant managing editor Radhika Jones and Radhika let's start right there. Why in the end Mark Zuckerberg?</s>RADHIKA JONES, ASST. MANAGING EDITOR, TIME: Well, the "Person of the Year" issue of course is a way to sort of assess what happened in 2010 and where we're going from here. And Julian Assange and the Tea Party were strong contenders. They are runners up in the issue, but when we thought about the ways that our society has changed, the ways that Facebook has really come to permeate our social relations, you know, not just with our close friends but globally, we felt that he was the strong choice.</s>KING: And often, this is a transformational figure. President Obama has been the "Person of the Year". Vladimir Putin has been the "Person of the Year". What was it like to have a 26-year-old guy come in when you say hey, guess what, you're the "Person of the Year"?</s>JONES: It's -- I mean for us it's an amazing thing. It's not very often that you get to put such a young person on the cover of "TIME". The first "Person of the Year", Charles Lindbergh in 1925, was actually 25, so he beats Zuckerberg by a year, another young man who pioneered technology. But it's a very special case. I mean I met Mark Zuckerberg during the process. He's an extremely affable young man, very energetic, but also very clearly focused. Has a real vision for what he wants Facebook to be and how people will use it and how we'll use the Web. Very forward thinking.</s>KING: Was there any downside</s>JONES: Well certainly if you look back at the ways that Facebook has made news this year, there have been concerns about privacy, about you know how your information on Facebook is used. Interestingly, of course, the movie "The Social Network" portrayed Mark Zuckerberg as sort of an alienated loner and people came to know him as a movie character. And what we found in the reporting is that the privacy concerns there -- you know they have to do with people sort of learning how to project their identity online. This is an ongoing process. But Facebook is pretty responsible about the way they use their data. Even if sometimes it's -- the privacy controls can be -- can seem a little difficult.</s>KING: Radhika Jones thanks for your time.</s>JONES: Thanks John.</s>KING: So let's take a closer look now at "TIME's" pick and the Facebook phenomenon. Look at the map of the world here. Any place you see light that is where Facebook has members. And you see the darker lights up here, across the Eastern Seaboard of the United States there, all across. This is Facebook's global reach. Let's take a little bit of a closer look. What are we talking about here? It's the number two site in the United States, 700 billion minutes a month -- 700 billion minutes a month spent on Facebook. Seventy percent of Facebook users live outside the United States. Look at this, look at this, one million, right, Facebook users in 2004. Look at this growth, bang, 500 million now. Look at that growth over six years from one million to 500 million. That is extraordinary. Who is Mark Zuckerberg? Born in 1984 in New York State, a "Star Wars" themed bar mitzvah, Philip Exeter Academy (ph), as a 19-year-old sophomore at Harvard, he decided to found (ph) Harvard $6.9 billion is his net worth right now, according to "Forbes" magazine, so what do we make of this pick? Well that's a great place to start a conversation with CNN's Piers Morgan and the veteran ABC News man Sam Donaldson.</s>KING: So Piers Morgan, let's start with you. Mark Zuckerberg, 26 years old, Facebook. You're on Facebook. Good choice?</s>PIERS MORGAN, HOST, CNN'S PIERS MORGAN TONIGHT: I think it's a very good choice because I think in terms of significance and the influence that he has had on the whole planet, it's been pretty extraordinary. I mean I've got on to Facebook and just joined Twitter. And when you see the empowerment that he and people that run these kinds of social network sites have given the public, ordinary members of the public, it's really quite remarkable. And I think it's a good thing. I think it's empowered everybody and it's enriched people's lives. People are having more conversation I think than they used to. This sort of allegation that somehow people don't have the old-fashioned conversations, well, my children, for example, they're -- two of them in their teens -- they are constantly now engaged in quite lively banter and discussion with friends all over the world. I think that's good.</s>KING: It is for the most part good. I would agree with you there. The one point I would make is I think that the friend, the value of the word friend has been somewhat cheapened by Facebook, not on purpose, I'm sure. But a friend is somebody you would jump in front of a bus for. That you would quit your job to go help and you get friended (ph) on Facebook by people you've never heard of before, but that's one minor criticism (ph). Our research shows you're not on Facebook, Sam Donaldson.</s>SAM DONALDSON, FORMER ABC NEWS ANCHOR: I'm not on Facebook. There are three of us who are not on Facebook. I don't know who the other two guys are because I can't talk to them. And you know something, I don't mean to be dismissive of anybody, but I don't want to talk to them and if I do I'll pick up the phone or I know how to use e-mail, if I want to send them a picture I will. But I think the people on Facebook -- I think it's a reasonable choice, by the way. I think Zuckerberg has met "TIME's" criteria. But if you want to talk to someone, you can do that individually. If you put yourself up on Facebook, aren't you saying to the world hey ma (ph), look me, no hands. It's me. Give me my 15 seconds of fame?</s>JOHN KING, HOST: He has revolutionized, though, to piers' point, the way we communicate the -- making us a community. He's the CEO of the world's third largest country if you look at that way, but who else might it have been? Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, was one of the finalists. The Tea Party was one of the finalists. Piers Morgan, if you were building a list, who else?</s>PIERS MORGAN, HOST, CNN'S PIERS MORGAN TONIGHT: Well, they certainly would two. I quite like the way they have the Chilean miners on there because in terms of global impact. You see, look at the Chilean Miners story because most people that I know probably lived that story through the prism of either MySpace, Facebook or Twitter. I'm now using the Twitter newsfeed from all the people that I'm following and you know, it's not the same as Facebook in the sense that you don't actually have to have a friend, they can just be a follower. It's very interesting I'm now getting my news on a kind of constant stream from a social networking platform and I'm getting it very, very fast. I can react to it. I can communicate my thoughts to it to the world, which is quite useful if you're presenting a show on CNN for example. I also see friends of mine engaging in this thing who want to have a voice, who want to have an opinion. In the end, everyone's entitled to an opinion and (inaudible) of social networking is everyone can now have one.</s>KING: The empowerment force of this trend that we're going to get. By the end of this interview, Sam Donaldson will join Facebook. Who else though?</s>SAM DONALDSON, FORMER ABC NEWS ANCHOR: Let me just say, first of all, everyone's entitled to their opinion. As pat Moynihan said so famously, not their own set of facts. When I see people chartering back and forth, I think that's wonderful. I'm not a censor. Let all flowers bloom. I like to hear a fact. I don't even tweet. By the way, why do you have me on? I don't tweet, I don't Facebook. Who else? Sarah Palin. I really mean it. I'm trying to be very serious. I think the Tea Party Movement would have been very large without her or Senator DeMint as a, you know, kind of afterthought. But, still, using "Time's" criteria for better or worse, she had a great impact this past year, the entire year. She lost some of her candidates. She won some of her candidates. The poor moose she shot. I mean, there's an impact for you, but I think that people like Sarah Palin, to me, are ones that really move -- great movements of this country.</s>KING: She commanded attention in our national politics like no one else, a singular figure. Love her or not. She was a dominant player in the Tea Party Movement. She was a dominant player in the campaign this year. Piers Morgan, when you come across the pond to our style of politics, Sarah Palin stands out why?</s>MORGAN: Well, she's a mesmerizing character on television and television is now the most powerful medium outside of the internet for any politician. If you chart back really the empowerment of the internet to the public, look no further than Barack Obama's campaign. One of the main reasons he got elected was his very, very clever strategy of hooking in millions of young people through the internet and making them feel part of his campaign. Now, I think since then Sarah Palin's look to this and thought that's a great idea. She tweets all the time. She's on Facebook with millions of people as her friends, if you like. She's driving a movement through, again, the prism of social networking and recognizing that if she can talk and communicate to people in a simple effective manner through the social networking sites, she's going to get votes. And it's become a very powerful tool not just for politicians but also I think for celebrities in terms of their commercial endorsements, in terms of plotting their shows, their film, whatever it may be. We are now in a world where publicists and managers and agents are going to go out of business because everyone can take charge of their own affairs and talk to their huge fan base. Paris Hilton today for example tweeted me. She has three and a half million followers. Now, she wants to get a free handbag, she just has to say, I like this handbag. Suddenly, she gets one.</s>KING: You see what you're missing, Sam? You see what you're missing Paris Hilton cannot tweet you.</s>DONALDSON: Well, she might be able to tweet me. I have not met her. Piers has a point there, but if everyone is a conversationalist and we are too. We say hello to people and our friends and what have you. But how are you going to have a television show like Piers is going to do? How are you going to tune in and say, I want to watch somebody who really knows how to carry on a conversation with someone interesting, if what you're doing is carrying on conversations with people who are not that interesting really, and you're talking about things that are not important?</s>MORGAN: Here's the thing, Sam. You raise a good point there. When my show starts in mid-January, I very much want to use the power of Twitter and Facebook to get people to send in suggestions for questions. I want to see their observations after an interview. Maybe even during an interview. Maybe in the middle of an interview, I can say, you just said something really interesting and it's electrified the country because I'm getting thousands of Twitterers coming on with their tweets who want to know this. And that will be quite dramatic television. I would know absolutely that I'm putting the question to this person --</s>DONALDSON: So you become the traffic cop --</s>MORGAN: Well, to a certain degree, but also what you're doing is you're being very inclusive to your audience and very interactive with them. I think we're in an era now, particularly in television, where if you want to stand out from the crowd, you have to do what Sarah Palin's doing politically and what Barack Obama did in his election campaign. You've got to get inclusive with your audience and you have to engage with them and interact with them. If you crack that, you can have a very successful show.</s>KING: It's a key point, Piers about, look, the revolution, the technology revolution is happening whether we like it or not. You covered the White House in the days pre-cable and covered the White House in the days post cable and it changed the world. That was a communications revolution. The social networks, Facebook, et al, are part of the same revolution whether we like it or not the world is changing and we adapt to it. You're right, a lot of the comments you get are inane. But every now and then, you see a mass communication from people of different stripes asking the same question or raising the same concern. You say, aha, this one has gravitas out there.</s>DONALDSON: That's right, but if everyone is playing, then who's leading? If everyone says, well, I can participate and ask all the questions as well as everybody else, and I can weigh in, then where is leadership? Why do we have the same thing that Piers has been talking about or all of us have been talking about, for the presidency? Instead of a president having a group of advisers, who have expertise in certain areas, yes, he keeps his finger to the wind to see what the public pulse is like, but he's supposed to lead. We have just simply -- everyone, call right in, tell me what you think. I think that would be disastrous, to tell you the truth.</s>MORGAN: Sam, I don't agree with that because I don't think you are abrogating leadership. I think you can lead through the prism of your own social networking platform. Sarah Palin is a great example of somebody who's doing that right now. She's not being accused of lack of leadership. Quite the contrary, she is leading from the front, but she is using those platforms I think in a highly effective way to increase her core votes. And so I think it's down to the individuals, whether you're a celebrity, politician, you know, member of the royal family, whoever it -- Buckingham Palace now tweets because they've realized they can actually get right to the audience they want to get to in a very quick and effective way, and it doesn't cost much money, it's free.</s>DONALDSON: I'll agree that we're not going to go back. I don't want to go back to an era -- I don't want to stand in the way -- couldn't stand if I wanted to, of technology and the progress. Everyone does get to participate, but I simply worry - the internet has made this possible whether you call it Facebook or what have you. I simply worry that people who want to participate don't come with any facts. They don't come -- they come with an opinion based on what? Well, it's nice that people who got started in India, the one legislator, the idea that President Obama was spending $200 million a day on that trip in Asia, nonsense. Yet it went around the blogosphere --</s>KING: Until we did our job and said not true.</s>DONALDSON: Does a lie ever get caught up with all the way around?</s>KING: That is a question to deal with as we go forward. All right, we'll end the conversation there. You raise a good point about our job and our responsibility. While we listen to everybody, we still have to have our own threshold of credibility --</s>DONALDSON: When I watch Piers - when he starts his new show and I know something about him, although we've never met. He prepares for an interview. He knows the subject, and he knows the things that maybe people will want to know. I want him to ask the questions. I don't want some -- ten yo- yos out there who have never met this person and don't know anything, call in and say what do they like for breakfast?</s>MORGAN: Sam, I will be the chief yo-yo man, don't you worry.</s>DONALDSON: Piers, you're a great guy.</s>KING: Sam, it's great to see you, my old friend. Piers is our new friend and Piers will listen to all those tweets and posts on Facebook and then use his judgment as well to make it all work.</s>MORGAN: I'll lead from the front.</s>KING: Starting right here in January. Piers, thanks for joining us and Sam as well. When we come back, we'll check today's top headlines and also check in on the president's big meeting today called 20 CEOs. They haven't always had good relations with this White House. We'll see how the meeting went today when we come back.