Various publications, organizations, and associations have chosen their “Person Of The Year” or other such notable person/people for 2004. It’s hard to argue with TIME magazine’s choice of President Bush; he certainly had a dramatic impact on the nation and the world. But it’s almost a “gimme” to choose a sitting president; same thing with opting for other obvious choices (Hitler back in WWII, for instance). When TIME chose Jeff Bezos a few years ago, I was impressed — not necessarily because I’ve been an Amazon.com fan for years, but because it wasn’t an obvious choice, and yet when you think about it, selecting Bezos was quite clever. The increase in on-line shopping, the societal impact, were bubbling just underneath the line of “breakthough” culture, but by choosing Bezos, it sort of kicked the issue into the mainstream and stamped a sort of “legitimacy” on Amazon.com, on-line shopping, and by extension, the entire on-line community.

So — flash-forward to 2004. There was quite a bit of discussion that bloggers, collectively, were in the running by TIME magazine for 2004 PotY. In light of that, I think that a pretty good case can be made that Evan Williams should be the Person Of The Year.

PC Magazine included Evan Williams in their “People Of The Year” feature. The Blog Herald nearly included Evan in their “Top 10 Interesting People” review of 2004. ABC News named bloggers “People Of The Year,” too.

Consider: Evan was the primary mover of Pyra, which created Blogger.com — which launched a million blogs. I know that there were others involved with Pyra, but Evan was the Chief Believer, to the best of my knowledge. With Blogger.com, Evan provided the tool — with convenient, post-from-anywhere simplicity — that allowed literally anyone to create a website and update it virtually at-will. TIME would not have been able to even consider bloggers for PotY if not for blogger.com, and by extension, Evan.

Some of the key events in the evolution of the blogosphere during 2004 were pivotal to events that shaped our culture — even our election. Dan Rather stepping down from CBS almost certainly would not have happened when it did without the bloggers. More to the point: the authenticity of the Rathergate memos might never have been questioned were it not for bloggers. The Swift Boat Veterans campaign and the “Christmas In Cambodia” stories — which I believe were critical in the outcome of the Presidential election — would not have reached the audience that they did without the assistance of bloggers. Tracing these key events backward, it’s easy to see how Evan Williams laid the groundwork for this kind of on-line community.

Even beyond the actual presidential election, go back a few months into the Democractic primaries, and remember who had all the buzz: Howard Dean. Why? Because he had harnessed the power of the internet…via his campaign blog, and the blogging efforts of his supporters. If not for the Dean Scream, his strategy (Trippi’s, too) might very likely have earned him the nomination, if not the presidency. And now, thanks to the success of Dean’s campaign in terms of media buzz and fundraising, there will never again be a political campaign that doesn’t incorporate the online community and blogs. Again, if we follow the electrons backwards, they point to Evan Williams.

And many of the A-Listers in the blogging community — Glenn Reynolds, Jeff Jarvis, Daily Kos, etc — started via blogger. I remember linking to “Instapundit” in August 2001 when he was using Blogspot as his host; same thing with Jeff Jarvis, whose “WWIII” blog was also hosted via Blogspot. Again, without Evan Williams, these influential bloggers arguably wouldn’t have had the impact and audience in 2004 that they actually do have.

Oh, and of course you probably wouldn’t be reading this right now if not for Evan…I stumbled across Blogger.com in October 2000, made my first post on October 5, and the rest is…well, if not history, then at least great fun for me ever since.

So. The culture of blogging…the impact of the “big-time” bloggers…the incredible explosion in the number and type of blogs…the integration of blogs in politics, world events (example), media, entertainment, and so many other aspects of our world…all of this leads me to declare Evan Williams as the “2004 Person Of The Year.”