Mario Sundar's Speakeasy

Quick Update: I just heard from William Beutler, Senior Online Analyst with New Media Strategies. It was interesting to see how he’d predicted TIME’s pick in an October post on his blog! Smart thinking!

Interestingly enough, Steve Rubel had argued that “Bloggers” should be voted as Person of the Year in 2004 and HyperGene Media Blog had argued for citizen journalists!!

So now back to reality, 2 years later – with YOU being voted as TIME’s Person of the YEAR 2006!
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Community rocks the TIME vote!

In an unprecedented move, TIME Magazine has chosen to celebrate the phenomenon of web 2.0 (there’s even a piece titled Web Boom 2.0) and the intense community building it has unleashed, by naming the Person of the Year as YOU!!! Looks like YouTube founders came a close second to YOU, since they have a feature article in the issue. Here’s a synopsis:

It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

Yes, the write-up is highly romanticized & cheesy, but when the aforementioned credit goes to each and every blogger on the planet, it forces us to sit back and review what we end up doing every working day on our blogs. To put things in perspective, TIME wonders:

Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I’m not going to watch Lost tonight. I’m going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I’m going to mash up 50 Cent’s vocals with Queen’s instrumentals? I’m going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?

The answer is, for some unbelievable reason, you and I. And that unbelievable reason, is that we see in each other a family of like-minded collaborators with whom we love sharing concepts and ideas related to a topic we all feel passionate about, and through that we foster & maintain our very own global marketing community.

And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME’s Person of the Year for 2006 is YOU.

And I’m so glad to be a part of this growing community of marketing collaborators and look forward to a year filled with exciting discoveries, face-to-face meetings, and hundreds of blog posts. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Jeremiah who first evangelized blogging to me and to the marketing community who welcomed me — Mack, Ann, Eric, Karl, & David.

To friends, family and community! Happy Holidays!

(Source: TIME‘s Person of the Year Article)

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