A very digital year

Friday, Dec. 31, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was named by Time magazine as “Person of the Year” for the soon-to-be-departed 2010, which at first glance seems to be an odd choice given there were so many more important and better-known people who drove the events of the year.

But Zuckerberg is fitting because, if nothing else, 2010 was the year of social media and Facebook is the vanguard. There was even a movie released this year called “The Social Network” loosely based on the company and its leaders.

Although social media aren’t new, they exploded this year and became crucial as smart phones, iPads and other mobile devices became pervasive. Everyone from the White House press secretary to the average teenager uses some form of social media, whether Facebook, Twitter, blogs or text messaging. Facebook reported having more than 550 million members, with 70 percent of those outside the United States. Half of the American population has a Facebook page.

Twitter, which lets users post their feelings in 140 characters or less, was on pace to end the year with as many as 200 million users. This year the company reported its users were posting more than 55 million tweets a day.

The social media scene seems dominated by celebrities, such as Sarah Palin, who created the word “refudiate” in a tweet, and Kanye West who apologized to Taylor Swift for rudely interrupting her during an awards show. But behind all of the year’s big events — from the oil spill to the World Cup — was a tsunami of Facebook status updates, tweets and blog posts.

Ecuador’s president announced a state of emergency because of civil unrest via a tweet. The CEO of technology giant Sun Microsystems made public his resignation in 140 characters. And even Great Britain’s stuffy royalty got in the act, announcing Prince William’s engagement via Twitter.

But social media are more than a way to get out information. They are virtual fence posts where people can gather to discuss anything on their minds, as well as spread the news. A review of the tops posts from 2010 on Facebook and Twitter is a miniature retrospective of the year. The World Cup, the earthquake in Haiti, the trapped miners in Chile, the iPad and iPhone 4 were among the most noted subjects on Facebook this year. The top news tweets included the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the floods in Pakistan and the conflict in Korea.

People were engaged through social media, connecting to politicians, charities and causes. The American Red Cross raised nearly $33 million for the earthquake relief effort in Haiti via text messaging.

Social media have made the world smaller — people can easily connect with others wherever they have Internet access — yet they have made it more distant, as people communicate via glowing screens instead of face to face.

The explosion of social media brought a new reality to the world in 2010. What’s ahead for 2011 is anybody’s guess, but it will undoubtedly be detailed in electronic posts in real time.