You are Person of the Year
Dearest reader and fellow blogger,
TIME Magazine has elected You person of the Year for your continuous efforts to change people’s mentality by helping them online with your knowledge, to control the Digital Information over the Internet.
You, who participated to Web 2.0, a massive social experiment. You, who help building a new kind of international understanding.
The answer is, you do. 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.
There is more than only the reward : we have beaten the pro’s. Many stories, not only geek news, have been broken by Bloggers. Several YouTube videos have gained classic status.
Marketing companies have invested in social networks to improve their presence and sales strategies.
And finally traditional accepted it and started participating, opening up their platform little by little.
But now we don’t have to rest. We have to continue showing the traditional media that this is only the beginning. The Internet still only represents a small corner of our society. Too many people world wide, even in our Western Society, don’t have a permanent internet access yet. Too many people still rely on 40 seconds news flashes on TV.
Too many people accept that an entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica must be correct. Do you prefer the Encyclopædia Britannica or the combined power of Wikipedia and the network around? I surely prefer the Wikipedia knowledge. Why should I believe an entry I can’t check? Wikipedia offers me the option to check the history of any entry and also to check the profile of authors.If I don’t agree, I can edit or start a discussion about the entry.
The Encyclopædia Britannica wants me to accept their knowledge without more.
TIME Magazine, thank you for the award, but you haven’t seen a thing yet. This was only the beginning. We are ready to claim the award in the next years too.
You the pros will slowly but surely join us in the New World of Digital Information Culture. The Democracy is ours. Since September 1786 we have been dreaming of this. Finally we will create it. It is a long way to go, but we will win. Social Networks United will win the fight. We will not rest because we were elected Person of the Year 2006.
I leave the honor to collect the award to David Krug, who will put this award in his resume, or Dave Winer, who will continue blogging until April 2007 before retiring.
[tags]Jack Of All Blogs, TIME Magazine, Person of the Year, Person of the Year 2006, social media, social network, news, 2006, bloggers, blog, democracy, Web 2.0, web20, Wikipedia, YouTube[/tags]
What do you think?