Following Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther King Jr., and a slew of U.S. presidents including Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg is the well-deserved 2010 “Time” Person of the Year.

In an introduction to the award in the Dec. 27 issue of “Time,” managing editor Richard Stengel wrote, “Person of the Year is not and never has been an honor. It is a recognition of the power of individuals to shape our world.”

In Zuckerberg’s case, I disagree.

In Hitler’s case, he ravaged Europe and landed on the cover of “Time” for the Person of the Year issue in 1938 for his powerful, yet unthinkable, influence on the world. It wasn’t an honor to be the Person of the Year in 1938. It was a fact.

But as the 2010 Person of the Year, Zuckerberg did more than most of his “Time” predecessors: He connected 600 million people in a groundbreaking virtual environment. Zuckerberg defined 2010, and his accomplishments made it an honor to be the latest Person of the Year.

Facebook adds nearly 700,000 new members each day. That’s practically adding a new Baltimore City to the Facebook community daily. In seven years, Zuckerberg has “wired a twelfth of humanity into a single network,” according to “Time” senior writer Lev Grossman’s featured article.

Grossman’s article does more than simply recognize the astounding achievements of the 26-year-old Harvard dropout. The article finally debunks the overdramatized portrayal of Zuckerberg in the October blockbuster “The Social Network.”

Despite his awkward presence and bugged-eyed stare, Grossman and the employees of Facebook agree that Zuckerberg has an unusual warmth, far from the womanizing, power-hungry outcast in “The Social Network.”

A small but hilarious example of “The Social Network’s” inaccuracy is the movie’s portrayal of Zuckerberg as a man who loved appletinis. Zuckerberg, who had never had an appletini in his life, bought every Facebook employee a ticket to see the movie and an appletini following the show.

Zuckerberg needed this article and this honor. “The Social Network” is a resoundingly negative portrayal of Zuckerberg, based mainly on narratives from those who strongly dislike Zuckerberg.

With critics suggesting that the hit movie may be the defining film of the past decade, it is only fitting that Zuckerberg gets to clear his name and tell his own story through “Time.”

“Time” unraveled a surprisingly modest characterization of Zuckerberg, worth an estimated $6.9 billion.  Zuckerberg drives a black Acura TSX, the Honda Accord-based luxury car that would even be a familiar sight in the JC oval. Zuckerberg rents his Palo Alto house, and his current hobby is learning Chinese.

But the facts speak more than any characterization ever could. Whether Zuckerberg is a kind or manipulative, modest or flashy, he has connected over 600 million users, and Facebook projects one billion users by August 2012—an amazing feat, especially when only two billion people currently have access to the internet.

Zuckerberg gave the Internet a completely new dimension, and unlike previous social network sites like MySpace and Friendster, the Facebook profile is much less “malleable and playful” and more reality-based.

The article unveils Zuckerberg’s plan for the future of the internet: a “Facebookization of the Web” as Grossman calls it where everything from Amazon reviews to YouTube comments are focused on what you and your friends are saying. The Internet will no longer be a place for strangers.

Grossman adds a touch of opinion to his article, suggesting that Facebook is the leading cause of American narcissism, addiction, and information overload. However, it’s hard to blame Zuckerberg, or even Facebook, for an individual’s downfall.

Facebook is essentially user-driven and, with a few exceptions such as the counter-intuitive privacy settings that were fixed earlier this year, the user is responsible for the content that he adds to his page and the results of publishing that content.

Social networking is the future, and while the entire Web may not be entirely “Facebookized” in the coming years, you can still “Like” this article at the bottom of this page.

Read the whole “Time Magazine” story here.

The Dec. 27 Person of the Year issue of “Time” features pages of captivating facts and graphics. Here are just a few of my favorite Facebook facts:

• Nearly half of all Americans have Facebook accounts.
• Seventy percent of Facebook’s users live outside the US.
• Zuckerberg is 5 feet 8 inches tall.
• Iceland has the highest rate of Facebook usage with 265,420 members or 86 percent of its population.
• Facebook’s color scheme is blue and white because Zuckerberg is red-green color blind.