( CNN ) -- Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been named TIME magazine 's Person of the Year . Rick Stengel , the magazine 's managing editor , made the announcement Wednesday on NBC 's `` Today '' show . Zuckerberg created the widely popular and influential social networking site , which reflects a major transformation in the way people communicate and do business . `` Facebook has merged with the social fabric of American life , and not just American but human life : nearly half of all Americans have a Facebook account , but 70 % of Facebook users live outside the U.S . It 's a permanent fact of our global social reality . We have entered the Facebook age , and Mark Zuckerberg is the man who brought us here . '' TIME noted that in less than seven years , `` Zuckerberg wired together a twelfth of humanity into a single network , thereby creating a social entity almost twice as large as the U.S. '' If the service were a country `` it would be the third largest , behind only China and India , '' TIME wrote . `` It started out as a lark , a diversion , but it has turned into something real , something that has changed the way human beings relate to one another on a species-wide scale . We are now running our social lives through a for-profit network that , on paper at least , has made Zuckerberg a billionaire six times over . '' Read the TIME essay explaining `` Why We Chose Him . '' The annual Person of the Year award is a staple of American journalism . Others considered for the honor this year were Afghan President Hamid Karzai , the trapped Chilean miners , the Tea Party movement in the United States , and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange . Film-goers got a taste of Zuckerberg and the early days of the site in this year 's movie , `` The Social Network . '' Zuckerberg grew up in Dobbs Ferry , New York , and graduated from high school at Phillips Exeter Academy . There , he studied Latin and became a fan of the classics . At Harvard University , which he attended for two years before dropping out to pursue Facebook , Zuckerberg `` was known for reciting lines from epic poems such as `` The Iliad , ' '' writes Jessica Vascellaro in The Wall Street Journal . From Shakira to `` ending desire , '' the interests Zuckerberg has listed on his private Facebook page are certainly unexpected . Among the others are `` Eliminating Desire , Minimalism , Making Things , Breaking Things , Information flow , Revolutions , Openness . '' His favorite musicians include Daft Punk and Lady Gaga . Among his favorite TV shows , he lists `` The West Wing , '' which , as The New Yorker 's profile of Zuckerberg points out , was written by Aaron Sorkin , who wrote the screenplay for `` The Social Network . '' Friends and co-workers call him `` Zuck . '' But Zuckerberg has earned other nicknames , too . The Wall Street Journal says his mom used to call him `` Princely '' when he was young . When he joined the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity at Harvard , his friends took to calling him `` Slayer , '' writes Rebecca Davis O'Brien , who attended Harvard with Zuckerberg and wrote a piece about him in The Daily Beast .
The annual award is a staple of U.S. journalism . Others considered were Julian Assange , Hamid Karzai .