Time Magazin has once again named their person of the year. But this time, it’s following the hype of web 2.0 and all that buzz around it, so the person of the year is us. The people of the internet, the bloggers, chatters, homepage designers, forum contributors, the Myspacers and Youtubers, etc. etc. Because we „control the information age“:

The new Web is a very different thing. It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it’s really a revolution. . . .

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. . . .

But at the same time, as people sit down and spend their spare time creating things they probably expected main stream media to do, there is equally a lot of crap going on, that nobody ever wanted to see:

Sure, it’s a mistake to romanticize all this any more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred.

I like that choice. 2006 really was the year of the social web. Not only in the US. Even in Germany („Old Europe“) web 2.0 has started to become a household buzzword. At least most of the major German newspapers had feature stories on it…

So what’s next, who can be the person of the year in 2007, if everyone has been it already in 2006? An alien?

(via)