Cannes Lions to honour Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg as 2010 Media Person of the Year

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Mark_Zuckerberg.jpgMark Zuckerberg (25), Founder & CEO of Facebook, the social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, families and coworkers, will be honoured with the Media Person of the Year Award at the 57th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

Cannes Lions, the world’s largest celebration of creativity in communications and the most prestigious international annual advertising awards, presents The Media Person the Year Award to a prominent personality who is an influential figure in the development of today’s media landscape, ultimately playing an integral part in shaping the future of the advertising industry.

Facebook, founded by Zuckerberg in 2004 whilst studying computer science atHarvard University, develops technologies that facilitate the sharingof information through the social graph, the digital mapping ofpeople’s real-world social connections. As CEO, Zuckerberg is responsible forsetting the overall direction and product strategy for the company. Heleads the design of Facebook’s service and development of its coretechnology and infrastructure. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California,Facebook has over 400 million active users.

“Cannes Lions Media Person of the Year is awarded to those who havechanged the face of media and communications, usually after a lifetimeof achievement. For Mark Zuckerberg to have created one of theinternet’s most dominant businesses so quickly, and to have had such aglobal impact on the way we all communicate with each other, is quitesimply astonishing. We are delighted to honour him with this award,”said Philip Thomas, Cannes Lions CEO.

“We are still in the early stages of our mission to build things thatmake the world more open and connected, so I feel honoured and humbledto receive this award in recognition of what we’ve accomplished sofar,” said Zuckerberg. “We willcontinue to innovate and push technical boundaries to create betterways for people, developers, and advertisers to connect and share onour platform.”

Zuckerberg will be honoured during the Press, Cyber and DesignLions Awards Ceremony on the evening of Wednesday 23 June, in thePalais des Festivals, Cannes.

Cannes Lions delegates will have the opportunity to listen to MarkZuckerberg when he presents the Facebook Seminar on Wednesday 23 June.

Previous recipients of the Media Person of the Year Award include,Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Corporation; Sir Anthony O’Reilly, CEOof Independent News & Media; Tsuneo Watanabe, Chairman andEditor-in-Chief of The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings; Sumner Redstone,Chairman and CEO of Viacom and Gerald Levin, CEO of AOL Time Warner.