Time Magazine have pulled off the Link Bait of the year with their Person of the Year Award. They’ve named ‘You’ (and me) as the winner of the award.
By ‘You’ they give the award to anyone involved in user generated content – that’s social media, blogging, video sharing etc etc etc.
“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.”
While I think it’s a great award (you/we) have been a part of a massive shift) I think it’s also a brilliant Linkbait strategy (planned or unplanned). Can you imagine the inbound links this is going to create for Time?!? Every user generated content maker is going to be linking to this one! :-)
PS: thanks to everyone who emailed this story through – Kris was first off the mark.
Update: Check out the links already coming in via Technorati for person of the year. I bet this graph goes crazy later today:
About Darren Rowse
My name is Darren Rowse and I’m a full time Blogger making a living from blogs like 
While user-generated content is great, it seems pretty lame to declare “You” as the person of the year. Now that you’ve exposed it as a clever scheme to drive traffic to their site, I’ll be sure to avoid linking it on all my blogs.
This is a nice alternative view on the whole Person of the Year award. However I think it’s an OK recognition, because Web 2.0 has actually made a major difference in society. And yes, their webtraffic will probably skyrocket, though I think this only proves their point, or the fact about Web 2.0 in 2006.
You guys are kind of nuts for criticising TIME MAGAZINE, a print publication, for recognzing us as relevant. Hats off to Time, it was only a matter of…Time.
“criticizing”. Fine, make fun of that too.
darren,
excellent point!
mark
Linkbaiting or not, you have to admit it’s a damn fine piece of buzz generating article.
You have to admit that a powerful mainstream media publication like TIME will help in introducing Web 2.0 and social networking to millions of readers.
I expect other MSM will follow their steps, so we might just see a bubblicious 2007 for start-ups. By the way, Happy Holidays to you and the family Darren, and to ProBlogger readers.
Hey,
You are obsessed with link baiting. Time is a big brand. Time couldn’t care less about some bunch of links…
I’m with NYC blogger, I think its great Time recognized us. Hopefully it will turn more people on to blog reading and help everyone out.
I think it’s a bit cynical to write the award off as pure link baiting. Maybe Darren is link baiting on link baiting. Seems to be working, you sly fox.
LOL – this is one of those occasions where my half attempt at humor fell flat on it’s face as I wrote last week I’m no good at this.
Although – you have to admit – they’ve got one of the biggest stories in the blogosphere today. I’ve lost count of how many bloggers I’ve read today claiming to be person of the year :-)
Darren and friends,
What TIME didn’t do was give us some nice award seal to put on our blogs/websites…
So I’ve taken the initiative to do that myself.
Of course I am DEFINITELY not trying for any linkbait of my own :)
Enjoy:
http://www.alistercameron.com/2006/12/18/time-person-of-the-year-unofficial-seal/
- Alister
Good ole link baiting methods. If you can’t beat em’, join em’ :)
So, it really is all about me. I mean, us.
You know when I first read your post; I thought Darren has nailed it. Then one commenter said you were nuts to criticize time.
A couple of points, first off far more people read Time than any blog on the planet. More than most blogs on the planet combined in fact.
Just an idea of how Big time is:
“Time Inc. magazines are read 340 million times each month worldwide by 173 million adults over18 years of age. Two out of every three U.S. adults read a Time Inc. publication every month. In the last year, about 70% of women in the U.K. read a magazine published by Time Inc.’s IPC Media unit, the largest consumer magazine company in the U.K.
Time Inc. continues to account for nearly a quarter of the advertising revenue of all U.S. consumer magazines. Time Inc. ended 2005 with three out of the top four magazines in both advertising revenues and pages. People remained the #1 magazine in advertising revenue for the 15th consecutive year. Seven of the top 25 magazines in advertising revenues in 2005 were Time Inc. titles. ”
So when a traditional media magazine this big recognizes how big new media has become it is a very big deal.
As new media content creators we often forget just how small we really are compared to the whole non blogging world out there.
I repeat this often because it bares repeating. Most people I speak to when I tell them about my blog, let alone my show BlogWorld ask me “what exactly is a blog?”.
These aren’t idiots living in caves. These are professionals, smart people, computer savvy people, business leaders and most of them have no clue.
That isn’t to say new media isn’t big it is and Time magazine just told the world about it.
No matter their motivations, what Time just did was a very good thing for bloggers, and new media content creators everywhere.
So if they get a few dozen, hundred, or thousand links out of it, I say good for them.
The Person of the idea is a tired idea. It is sad that Time and many old media maagazines hasve rely on blog-like link articles to survive.
MediaVidea has more on the issue:
http://mediavidea.blogspot.com/2006/12/no-time-for-time-magazine.html
Yes, and no.
Time doesnt care about making their site more legitmate – But they do care about traffic. Everyone does.
Wow… it’s not only a creative story but a marketing technique as well! That’s pretty genius of TIME.
The user-generated world is great… we haven’t seen anything like it in all of history. I know I’m benefiting from it!