20 May 2012

Facebook’s Zuckerberg marries in secret

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg marries his long-term girlfriend in secret, the day after the firm lists on the Nasdaq stock exchange and was valued at $117bn.

Mark Zuckerberg changed his Facebook status to 'married'

He wed Priscilla Chan on Saturday, 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, whose shares are worth nearly $20bn 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.

More than 576 million shares changed hands, setting a trading volume record for U.S. market debuts. Facebook posted $3.7bn in revenue in 2011 and $1bn 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.