NEW YORK : Facebook
co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wed longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan
yesterday, announcing the nuptials through a status update on the social
networking site.
The 28-year-old
billionaire's wedding took place a day after Facebook's initial public offering
on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Friday. More than 280,000 people 'liked'
Zuckerberg's status change, which was accompanied by a photo of the smiling
couple in wedding attire in a small, verdant outdoor setting with a string of
lights behind them.
In the photo, the famously
casual Zuckerberg is wearing a dark blue suit and tie, a departure from his
trademark 'hoodie,' while Chan has on a sleeveless white dress with lace
overlay.
The pair wed in an intimate
backyard ceremony in Palo Alto, California, according to People magazine. The
couple had planned the exchange of vows for four months, but surprised their
guests, who thought they were to celebrate Chan's recent graduation from
medical school, the magazine reported.
Zuckerberg's sister, Arielle
Zuckerberg, posted, "Balls. Now I'm the only unmarried Zuckerberg..."
on her Facebook page. She is listed by Chan as a family member on the site.
Zuckerberg designed a simple
ruby wedding ring for Chan himself, People reported. Guests dined on food from
the couple's favourite restaurants, and nibbled on mouse-shaped chocolates that
the pair ate on their first date nine years ago.
Tim Carvell, lead writer for
"The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart, reacted to the news on Twitter,
writing: "Congratulations, Mark Zuckerberg! As a gift, I got you the names
of all my friends, a list of my favourite movies, and some photos of me!"
Opening
bell to wedding bells
Zuckerberg, whose shares are
worth nearly US$20 billion (RM62.7 billion) and who retains voting control of
Facebook, marked the debut of his company's stock at Facebook's Silicon Valley
campus on Friday, symbolically ringing the opening bell for stock trading.
The IPO did not go as well
as the social networking company had hoped, with shares closing just above the
offering price of US$38 a share after trading glitches and a last-minute, 25
per cent increase in the number of shares being sold.
More than 576 million shares
changed hands, setting a trading volume record for U.S. market debuts. Facebook
posted US$3.7 billion in revenue in 2011 and US$1 billion in profit. The site
boasts 900 million global users.
Facebook's emergence as a
cultural phenomenon was depicted in the fictionalized 2010 film "The
Social Network."
Zuckerberg, Time magazine's
Person of the Year in 2010, started Facebook in his Harvard University dorm
room eight years ago, before dropping out of the Ivy League school. Chan just
graduated from medical school at the University of California, San Francisco.
The couple met while at Harvard.
Neither Zuckerberg nor Chan
commented further about their marriage on their Facebook pages, and Facebook
representatives did not immediately respond to e-mailed requests for comment on
the wedding.
The couple adopted a
Hungarian sheepdog named Beast a year ago, and live together in Palo Alto. (Reuters)
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