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The Person of the Year is You

I clicked on a link to read the latest TIME Magazine cover story when I was confronted by an interstitial ad for the 2007 Chrysler Sebring. The ad copy read, “You might not be TIME Person of the Year, but you can drive like you are.” The funny thing is, you is TIME Person of the Year. Who is? No, you is. Huh? With apologies to Abbott & Costello, allow me to explain.

In 2006, the World Wide Web became a vehicle for unprecedented community and collaboration. Wikipedia emerged as a global repository of knowledge. YouTube hosted millions of user-created videos, while Flickr did the same for personal photos. MySpace allowed millions more to customize and share personalized Web spaces. Ordinary people like you and I created Facebook profiles, Second Life avatars, and Amazon reviews. They blogged about politics or the family pet, recorded podcasts, and built open-source software. For doing all of this, TIME selected you as the 2006 Person of the Year.

Not since 1982, when TIME editors chose the computer as Machine of the Year, has technology featured so prominently in the magazine’s annual selection. Intel CEO Andrew Grove and Amazon CEO Jeffrey Bezos received the honour in 1997 and 1999 respectively, but this year’s choice is very different. Shining the spotlight on ordinary citizens and their online communities focuses attention on the evolving Web, or Web 2.0 as referred to by an increasing number of pundits. Debate has swirled over the precise meaning of the term, but the concept of users as co-developers has a place in most definitions.

What implications will Web 2.0 have for financial institutions? Financial examples were notably absent from the TIME article. Does this imply that the financial services industry will remain untouched by this phenomenon? In my next post, I’ll illustrate why I don’t think so.

Posted by Nelson T. on December 22, 2006 11:32 PM

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