Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has been named Time's "Person of the Year" for 2010.
He joins the ranks of winners that include heads of state and rock stars as the person the magazine believes most influenced events of the past year.
Time's "Person of the Year" is the person or thing that has most influenced the culture and the news during the past year for good or for ill. In naming Zuckerberg, Time cited him "for changing how we all live our lives".
In a posting on his Facebook page, Zuckerberg said that being named Time's "Person of the Year" was "a real honour and recognition of how our little team is building something that hundreds of millions of people want to use to make the world more open and connected".
Zuckerberg, who owns about a quarter of Facebook's shares, has built the social network into an international phenomenon by stretching the lines of social convention and embracing a new and far more permeable definition of community.
Born in Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room, the site has in six years grown to more than 500 million users worldwide and a net worth in the billions of dollars.
Facebook was the subject of director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's film "The Social Network", which features a dark portrayal of Zuckerberg by Jesse Eisenberg, as well as the direction he's taking his company and his status as one of America's most influential figures.
Zuckerberg has put himself on the map not only as one of the world's youngest billionaires, but also as a prominent newcomer to the world of philanthropy.
Earlier this year, he pledged $100 million over five years to the Newark, New Jersey, school system.
At 26, Zuckerberg is the youngest "Person of the Year" since the first one chosen, Charles Lindbergh, who was 25 when he was named in 1927.
