TIME 2010 Person of the Year: Reevaluating Zuckerberg

In the light of Facebook’s IPO PR disaster, I think it’s interesting that TIME felt compelled to go back and take another look at the magazine’s 2010 “Person of the Year” cover/cover choice again. (He’s Lev Grossman’s original cover story.)

As the face of the face of Facebook, and, in TIME’s estimation, the key face of the times that year, I imagine some of those second thoughts have to do with the intimacy and innocence of this portrait and how outsized, but also blankly receptive it is (analogies to the site intended). Also, who, at least conceptually, isn’t drawn to believe in the boy wonder? One thing photography is good at is capturing where our heads were at some point in the past — and also tweaking us for our greater innocence.

(photo: Martin Schoeller for TIME)