John McCain, the senior United States Senator from Arizona, has reportedly called Facebook creator and CEO Mark Zuckerberg the most popular man in the Middle East. During a discussion at the Brookings Institution, McCain praised social networks in general for helping protesters organize in countries like Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.
“The No. 1 hero in Tunisia is a guy named Mark Zuckerberg,” McCain said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “This social networking cannot be underestimated in how all of these events, really the driving force in how all of this transformed and took place,” McCain also said according to Fox News. The Senator then told a story from a young man he met in Egypt, who held up his BlackBerry and said, “I can get 200,000 people in the square in two hours.”
McCain believes this is just the beginning. “Egypt is the heart and soul of the Arab world,” he said. “What happens in Egypt will be vital to what happens in the rest of the region.”
I’m not sure about the “most popular man” statement, but I do believe that these “Facebook revolutions” are giving Zuckerberg’s image a big boost. With all this positive press around social networks helping topple governments in third world countries, Zuckerberg can forget about how Hollywood portrayed him in The Social Network.
