Will Twitter make Time Magazine's person of the year?

The fast-approaching end of the year means more than Christmas shopping anxiety and looking forward to office parties antics – it also brings us the iconic Time’s Person of the Year. And this year’s chirping favourite couldn’t help but get our attention.

Over the past eight decades, Time Magazine’s hall of fame (in the form of their Person of the Year) has featured the good (Churchill, the Pope, The Good Samaritans with the likes of Bono and Bill Gates), the bad (historical villains such as Hitler and Stalin)… and the rather random (most notably “You” in 2006). Judging by the rumoured contenders - 2009 should be no exception.

A panel met last week to discuss their choices of candidates and on the shortlist were the good guys (nothing too surprising or exciting there as Michelle Obama and Steve Jobs were put forward) as well as this year’s unanimous villain, fraudster extraordinaire Bernard Madoff ; the real buzz however came from another set of nominees : the oh-so-written-about endless source of dramatic news pieces, the economy (allow us to stifle a yawn), and our clear favourite and 2009 crush Twitter.

Stalin featured on the cover of Time Magazine in 1939.

Panelist and former mayor of New York Rudolph Giuliani might reckon the economy affected the poor, the wealthy and us all alike, but we feel the constant reminder might be somewhat incompatible with the seasonal holiday cheer. Twitter on the other hand … It has gotten us new friends, has made us more efficient stalkers, it has taught us new lingo, has been a diet companion… We are not so much addicted as highly dependent in a very much “matter of life and death” way.

But don’t go off tweeting in excitement over the great news yet. Indeed some skeptical voices have been heard to say that already the site is experiencing a slight decrease in activity, therefore suggesting it might be more relevant to award it the title of Person of Last Year; and when one of the Time’s panellist called it “so 2009” she maybe should have realised that in the trendy circles that is in fact the opposite of a compliment. The greatest backlash may have come in the form of president Obama’s admission that despite having been the first Twitter superstar he, well, hasn’t actually ever used it...(see below)