LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The founder of Facebook Inc., 26-year-old Mark Zuckerberg was named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" Wednesday for "creating a new system of exchanging information" and "changing how we all live our lives." Zuckerberg created Facebook for college students when he was a sophomore at Harvard University. Now, a hot commodity outside of limited academic circles, Facebook users now post a billion pieces of content, such as photos and messages daily.

"Facebook has merged with the social fabric of American life, and not just American but human life: nearly half of all Americans have a Facebook account, but 70% of Facebook users live outside the U.S.," Time magazine said. "It's a permanent fact of our global social reality. We have entered the Facebook age, and Mark Zuckerberg is the man who brought us here."

Time magazine added that in less than seven years, "Zuckerberg wired together a twelfth of humanity into a single network, thereby creating a social entity almost twice as large as the U.S." If the service were a country "it would be the third largest, behind only China and India," Time wrote.

"It started out as a lark, a diversion, but it has turned into something real, something that has changed the way human beings relate to one another on a species-wide scale. We are now running our social lives through a for-profit network that, on paper at least, has made Zuckerberg a billionaire six times over."

Zuckerberg is tied for No. 35 on the 2010 list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, according to Forbes magazine. His wealth jumped 245 percent to $6.9 billion, the largest percentage increase on its annual list, the magazine said.

Facebook is based in Palo Alto, California, and lets users share information about themselves and communicate with "friends." About 70 percent of the site's users are outside of the U.S.

Facebook has not been without tits share of controversies and lawsuits. As detailed in the hit film, "The Social Network" - which has generated lots of positive buzz for the upcoming Academy Awards, the company faced a lawsuit from brothers Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, Harvard students who said they hired Zuckerberg to write code for a dating and social-networking site before he started Facebook. The Winklevosses settled for $65 million in 2008.