Mark Zuckerberg (25), Founder & CEO of Facebook, the social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, families and co-workers, will be honoured with the Media Person of the Year Award at the 57th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

Cannes Lions, the world's largest celebration of creativity in communications and the most prestigious international annual advertising awards, presents The Media Person the Year Award to a prominent personality who is an influential figure in the development of today's media landscape, ultimately playing an integral part in shaping the future of the advertising industry.

Facebook, founded by Mark in 2004 whilst studying computer science at Harvard University, develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people's real-world social connections. As CEO, Mark is responsible for setting the overall direction and product strategy for the company. He leads the design of Facebook's service and development of its core technology and infrastructure. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Facebook has over 400 million active users.

"Cannes Lions Media Person of the Year is awarded to those who have changed the face of media and communications, usually after a lifetime of achievement. For Mark Zuckerberg to have created one of the internet's most dominant businesses so quickly, and to have had such a global impact on the way we all communicate with each other, is quite simply astonishing. We are delighted to honour him with this award," said Philip Thomas, Cannes Lions CEO.

"We are still in the early stages of our mission to build things that make the world more open and connected, so I feel honoured and humbled to receive this award in recognition of what we've accomplished so far," said Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and Founder of Facebook. "We will continue to innovate and push technical boundaries to create better ways for people, developers, and advertisers to connect and share on our platform."

Mark Zuckerberg will be honoured during the Press, Cyber and Design Lions Awards Ceremony on the evening of Wednesday 23 June, in the Palais des Festivals, Cannes.

Cannes Lions delegates will have the opportunity to listen to Mark Zuckerberg when he presents the Facebook Seminar on Wednesday 23 June.

Previous recipients of the Media Person of the Year Award include, Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Corporation; Sir Anthony O'Reilly, CEO of Independent News & Media; Tsuneo Watanabe, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings; Sumner Redstone, Chairman and CEO of Viacom and Gerald Levin, CEO of AOL Time Warner.

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Facebook Factsheet

About Facebook
Founded in February 2004, Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people's real-world social connections. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment.
Product
Facebook's simplified navigation gives users easy access to core site functions and applications. Profile, Friends, Networks and Inbox - pages core to the user experience on Facebook - have a prominent place at the top of the user's profile page. Facebook applications - Photos, Notes, Groups, Events and Posted items - are displayed on the left side bar, along with any third-party applications a user has added to their account.
Technology
Facebook is one of the most-trafficked PHP site in the world, and one of the largest MySQL installations anywhere, running thousands of databases. Facebook has built a lightweight but powerful multi-language RPC framework that allows the company to seamlessly and easily tie together subsystems written in any language, running on any platform. The company is the largest user in the world of memcached, an open-source caching system, and has created a custom-built search engine serving millions of queries a day, completely distributed and entirely in-memory, with real-time updates.
Platform
Facebook Platform is a development platform that enables companies and engineers to deeply integrate with the Facebook website and gain access to millions of users through the social graph. Facebook is a part of millions of people's lives all around the world providing unparalleled distribution potential for applications and the opportunity to build a business that is highly relevant to people's lives. More information can be found here.
Board
Members: Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Jim Breyer, Don Graham and Peter Thiel; Observer: David Sze; Observer: Paul Madera
Employees
1,000+
Users
Over 400 million active (users who have returned to the site in the last 30 days)
Offices
Headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif. U.S. offices: Atlanta; Birmingham, Michigan; Chicago; Dallas; Detroit; New York; Venice Beach, Calif.; Washington, DC International offices: Dublin; London; Milan; Paris; Stockholm; Sydney; Toronto.

57th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, 20-26 June 2010, Cannes, France.

The International Advertising Festival - Cannes Lions - is the world's biggest celebration of creativity in communications. As the most prestigious international annual advertising awards, over 22,500 entries from all over the world are showcased and judged at the Festival. Winning companies receive the highly coveted Lion trophy, honouring the most creative film, film craft, print, outdoor, interactive, radio, design, sales promo & activation and integrated advertising, as well as the best media, direct marketing, PR and Titanium ideas. The Festival is also the only truly global meeting place for advertisers, advertising and communication professionals. Over 6.000 delegates from 90 countries attend seven days of exhibitions, screenings, as well as over 50 high-profile seminars, 30 workshops and master classes presented by renowned worldwide industry leaders. As the networking and learning opportunity of the year, Cannes Lions is the must-attend event for anyone involved in brand communication.

For further information, please visit www.canneslions.com or contact:
Amanda Benfell, PR & Press Manager
Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival
Greater London House, Hampstead Road, London NW1 7EJ, United Kingdom
Tel: +44-20-7728 4040; E-mail: amandab@canneslions.com