Mark Zuckerberg marries, caps off busy week
The Facebook founder has married his college sweetheart in the same week as listing the company on the share market for more than $100bn.
Mark Zuckerberg has married his college sweetheart, Priscilla Chan in a surprise ceremony. It topped off a busy week for the pair, after Zuckerberg listed Facebook on the share market for $104bn, celebrated his 28th birthday, and Chan got her medical degree from the UC San Francisco.
How does your week look in comparison?
Despite being a surprise ceremony, the wedding had been planned for months, according to a spokesperson for the couple. The ceremony wasn't planned to coincide with Facebook's IPO, but rather Chan's graduation. It was a relatively humble affair, with about 100 close friends and family gathering in the couple's back garden of their Palo Alto home, thinking they were there to celebrate Chan's graduation. Surprise!
Zuckerberg added the event on Facebook, as he did when he listed the company on Nasdaq on Friday, and he also designed the ruby ring himself. The two met at Harvard nine years ago.
On Friday Facebook went public, letting us punters buy stock. The company was valued at $104bn (£66bn) -- a little less than expected, as people are more wary of making such investments since the dotcom bubble. One of the hurdles Facebook faces is that it doesn't host adverts on its mobile apps, and seeing as 425 million people access the site this way, and that the company makes most of its money through ads, this could be a significant obstacle to its future financial success. (Not to mention that, speaking from personal experience, the Android app is complete pants, and crashes all the time.)
The Guardian's Charles Arthur has even speculated that Facebook could make its own smart phone next, suggesting the company could 'do a Google' and get into hardware. Some handsets feature a dedicated Facebook button, though Zuckerberg was adamant a couple of years ago that it wasn't working on a mobile.
Do you think Facebook would make a phone? How would it need to be different to stand out? Let me know in the comments below, or on our Facebook page.