21-year-old is World's Most Influential Person

A 21-year-old college student who goes by the name of 'moot' has scored a stunning victory over the likes of Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Sonia Gandhi to be named World's Most Influential Person by Time magazine.

The founder of the online community 4chan.org, whose real name is Christopher Poole, received 16,794,368 votes and an average influence rating of 90 (out of a possible 100) to handily win the third annual Time 100 poll, the magazine said yesterday.

Since moot launched 4chan.org in 2003, the site has given birth to Internet memes (symbols) as diverse as Lolcats and Rickrolling. 4chan averages 13 million page views a day and 5.6 million visitors a month; by some estimates it is the second largest bulletin board in the world," it said.

To those questioning moot's worthiness of the title, Time.com managing editor Josh Tyrangiel says moot is no less deserving than previous title holders like Nintendo video-game designer Shigeru Miyamoto (2007) and Korean pop star Rain (2006).

"I would remind anyone who doubts the results that this is an Internet poll," he says. "Doubting the results is kind of the point."

US President Barack Obama is a distant 37, while Dalai Lama is placed at 61st in the list. Malaysian politician Anwar Ibrahim has taken the second place in the top 100, followed by evangelist Rick Warren (third), Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud (fourth) with Internet search giant Google's Larry Brilliant taking the fifth position.