TIME Magazine has given Putin its annual Person of the Year designation for his role in stabilizing Russia's political system. It's a recognition rather than an award per se - a recognition of the person or group that TIME believes has exerted the most influence for good or ill on earth in the past year.

(I wonder how many copies of this issue TIME will sell compared to their "YOU" issue last year.)

As the Web and new media continue to intensify the Long Tail effect and attention segmentation, I wonder if in 10 or 20 years TIME will have a much harder, ahem, time choosing a single entity as its PotY.

On a different note, give Russia 10 or 20 years and let's see where the Web and new media take it and its people.

Do you think Putin's emphasis on stability (which, by the way, comes even at the cost of civil liberties to a certain extent) will be undermined by the YouTubes and Facebooks of the 2007-and-beyond Web? I do. It's simply getting too easy to publish information and opinion on the Internet for the whole globe to digest - and too hard to suppress the publication of antagonistic voices.