Mark Zuckerberg Pushed the Button; Simultaneously Posted a Status and Began NASDAQ Trading

Instead of pressing the button to just ring the bell that would start Facebook’s NASDAQ trading, Mark Zuckerberg had something else up his sleeve. To spice up his ‘bell ringing’ endeavor, he apparently worked closely with Facebook engineers that rigged the button which NASDAQ brought to Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters on Wednesday to a cell phone that was connected to the internet and signed into Facebook. The button and the phone were apparently connected via the smartphone’s headphone jack and after some intricate work to get the timing absolutely right; they managed to get it to work.

This mechanism allowed a Facebook post from Mark Zuckerberg to be posted to his Timeline simultaneously as he pushed the button to open NASDAQ trading for Facebook this morning. The post read, “FB – Founded in 2004, Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.” The post tagged 5 people, Vice President of Product, Chris Cox, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman, Treasurer Cipora Herman and Deputy General Counsel Dave Kling. With this being a huge moment in the history of Facebook, he could have just gotten a random employee to post the status manually up on his Timeline but we’ve got to admit that this was much cooler.

Pradeep Chandrasekaran
Categories: Cellphones, Web
Tags: Facebook