I'd guess that the first two are coincidence, and the latter two chosen. Interesting to try and see a person just through the purity of fact of choice rather than media narrative.
For the HN crowd that likes random behind-the-scenes details:
In the photo, the sun is low and behind them. This makes great rim light--and looks fantastic through the veil--but it also means you need to use strobes or a reflector to light their faces.
It's really common to see people squinting / looking horrible with reflectors. I would guess a flash because Priscila looks quite relaxed, and most wedding photographers work without assistants.
Frankly that's all that needed to be said. No talk about pre-nups, IPO's or Facebook. Just that a high profile, but obviously loving couple tied the knot. Makes me smile just thinking about it.
It's inspiring for me that Mark went through such an incredible ordeal in the founding of Facebook but he was still able to make it work between him and Priscilla. It shows that you can have a relationship while also trying to change the world (and, hell, your partner may be what gets you through).
You don't know them, I'm fairly confident. I don't know them. Almost no one here knows them. The single and only reason this has any relevance is because of Facebook, IPOs, from which a natural discussion is pre-nups, etc. Or are we to all pretend that we're pals?
I don't understand some of the materialistic comments (prenups etc.) on this thread. Zuck marrying his long time love is a beautiful blessing. PG, I'd met Zuck after you had invited him to your startup school 2007 and since then have interacted with him. He also kept his word on followups he'd announced during his talk then. He is such a humble person despite all his successes. I'm so happy for him.
I see a lot of posts regarding gold-digging and motives - and I just want to say that if there's one person you can marry knowing what their true intentions are, the only thing better than a college girlfriend is a high-school one :)
Absolutely. Gotta hand it to a couple who's kept it together for over nine years, through the birth and growing pains of an unprecedented company, and med school to boot.
Man, this kid is having the time of his life right now. How can any guy beat IPO + married in two days? Good for him, and take that vacation while you still can!
From what I hear, the pressure starts to build when your a public company. Those quarterly earnings should be interesting.
Yeah, pressure from people who have authority to fire you. I don't think that's the case for Zuckerberg.
"Even after the IPO, Zuckerberg remains Facebook's single largest shareholder, with 503.6 million shares. And he controls the company with 56 percent of its voting stock." (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47491836/ns/business/)
Does anyone know what sort of recourse the minority shareholders and the other 44% voting holders have if Mark runs the company into the ground?
Err... is it normal for there to be recourse? If you do not have a controlling interest, you do not have control. That's that. If you aren't comfortable with that, sell.
Shareholders may bring suit against an officer on behalf of a company. It is designed to protect minority investors against exactly the scheme Zuck has set up. The corporation is the benefactor of any damages to prevent abuse by shareholders.
Unfortunately people do plan to run companies into the ground (usually so they can exit the smoking shell with a fat profit) which is why these laws are necessary.
that depends. to the ground financially? if ads click-through wont progress and they wont find mobile revenue model, it will be extremely hard for Zuck to keep users happy AND keep this operation running (financially, that is).
As erdemozkan stated in a duplicate discussion: Mark married Priscilla one day after the IPO. That means they were waiting for IPO to get married.
Sorry for asking a question that may seem obvious to others, but why were they waiting for the IPO? Is it for financial or legal reasons, such as a Community Property State?
Did Zuckerberg sign a prenuptial agreement? An internet search implies he didn't. This reminds me of Tom Leykis' advice that everyone have a prenup, for many reasons. On the other side, some spouses have created companies by divorcing a business owner and taking half of the company.
How has Mark Zuckerberg protected his ownership of Facebook from his marriage? How would you?
He didn't "wait until the IPO" according to people who knew, he waited for her to graduate. The timing of the IPO is very hard to predict given it requires sign off by the SEC, graduation on the other hand, pretty easy.
I don't doubt for a minute that they have some sort of agreement in place in the event of a separation. While most might think such an agreement would benefit Mark, the real beneficiary are Facebook shareholders if splitting up required selling shares to split proceeds. That could really move the stock unreasonably.
However, as I know a number of people who are (some of whom merely were :-) very very wealthy, they share a common difficulty in dating post wealth. Not that every potential spouse is a "gold digger" but the people who are inclined to be one come out of the wood work apparently. It can be a very sad thing, being lonely and knowing how that makes you a target. So having someone you know (and knew) when you were just a crazy dreamer, and they still wanted to be with you, is a very priceless thing.
So having someone you know (and knew) when you were just a crazy dreamer, and they still wanted to be with you, is a very priceless thing.
Amen. I agree, minus the prenup part though - I'm not cynical about Mark/Priscilla's love for each other because of your last sentence there, like I highly doubt that the Gates have that kind of arrangement either. As someone who's young, crazy, and laser-focused on the startup game, and still so far away from where I want to be in life, that's something that's in the back of my mind all the time whenever I'm seeing someone special. Thanks for the comment.
> As someone who's young, crazy, and laser-focused on the startup game, and still so far away from where I want to be in life, that's something that's in the back of my mind all the time whenever I'm seeing someone special.
Shouldn't you keep "I should get rich first" in the back of your mind instead? You can always not marry them.
I don't think that gold diggers are of particular danger for wealthy people. It's more a matter of convenience. Zuck is focused on Facebook, he simply does not want to spend time dating/searching for someone else.
> While the date of the wedding was timed to Zuckerberg’s birthday and Chan’s graduation, the IPO was a moving target, our source says, and was definitely not part of the whole plan.
I would marry someone I trusted to death and beyond, compared to which trusting with mere property is trivial. Yes, it's a risk... there's a saying about risk, though, isn't there?
Let's give Mark the benefit of the doubt and assume he's marrying for love.
The couple may be madly in love today, but human emotions are fickle and people change and grow over time. Sadly, there may come a day when both are more concerned with the future of the FB empire than with each other.
How true and as anyone who has been through divorce will confirm.
In addition to the potential problem with what would be marrying simply a normal or a successful person I can't even begin to imagine the challenges of a marriage to someone with that much money and job responsibility. And no question marriage will detract from his work life (especially if he decides to have children). That even happened to Bill Gates as anyone who remembers the Gates before marriage will attest to.
Prenups really kill the mood. "I love you til death do us part"—but if you turn out to be a bitch I'm totally cutting you off.
Lots of aspects of marriage, and society in general, don't stand up to rational scrutiny. We're not just fallible, we're downright wooey. That doesn't mean these institutions are valueless or predatory—just that the human experience is not primarily about the rational.
I could see this one either way. Maybe if you're a billionaire, the prenup makes it clear you're marrying for love rather than profit. From down here in the sub-sub-sub-billionaire world, it doesn't look that way, but who knows? Lots of things are different "at scale."
Losing half your wealth when things go south also kills the mood. You are right it comes down to rational vs emotional decision.
From what I have seen of the public persona of Mark you would think there would be something there. The guy has carefully crafted deals up to this stage to ensure he keeps maximum control.
Losing half your wealth should have approximately zero effect. Any computer scientist will tell you that "a factor of two is close enough".
I'm joking, but there's a hint of truth here. I can't imagine any level of wealth at which suddenly having half (or twice) as much would make any difference to me at all. A factor of two either way really wouldn't change my life appreciably.
I can't imagine any level of wealth at which suddenly having half (or twice) as much would make any difference to me at all.
You sure about that? I think $40k down to $20k could be a pretty jarring transition, especially if you have established expenses like dependents or a mortgage.
Money is, perhaps, replaceable, but losing the family farm that has been in the family for seven generations would be a sad day though. I've seen it happen before.
If I worked for years on my business, married a woman, and then she cheated on me and now gets half due to the divorce. It wouldn't really be the money that bothers me. It would be that that this despicable person gets half of my stuff.
If you don't think that this will happen, it does. In the US court systems, the woman pretty much has all of the power. If she cheats on you and has a baby with another guy, you most likely will end up paying child support.
Getting a pre-nup is pretty much going through the work of a divorce, but before you get married. He wouldn't leave her with nothing, unless she found her lawyer from the bus station bench.
"'Til death do us part" comes from one view on marriage, which not all people share. For one thing, there has been no mention of a religious ceremony of any kind in the reports I've seen.
Trust aside, people who truly love each other and are honest with each other sometimes do get into a relationship ending fight or stop feeling the spark they once did and break up. If two people know each other deeply enough to get married, their communication is hopefully open enough to be able to have a rational discussion about anything, including prenups, without hurting the other by bringing it up. After such discussion, if they come to the decision that the existence of the prenup would psychologically decrease the success rate of their marriage, they are welcome not to enter into such an agreement. But if they don't feel that that's the case, it makes a lot of logical sense to have one.
Disclaimer: I'm not married, and I honestly don't know which camp I'll fall into.
My understanding is that he's been with this girl since Facebook started anyway. I'd be surprised if she did not have a fair stake in Facebook even if she were not married to Mark.
Why would she have shares? If she wasn't an employee I don't see why she would. I mean Mark might have given her some as an anniversary gift/etc at some point, but you don't get shares in a company just for dating the founder. Although I suppose she could have been part of a friends/family founding round.
It may be different in the USA, but in many countries there are legal limits on what a pre-nup can actually cover. If the relationship pre-dates the foundation of the country, it isn't unrealistic that she would have some claim on "Mark's" assets should they break up in the future.
For what it is worth, this is really very poor taste.
He doesn't really need one. Facebook is a premarital asset and he has no other assets. In California anything you own before marriage is yours including the gains on those assets and you can take money out and spent it on other things and as long as you can trace it back to the premarital money then your good to go.
It's ok, the tracking cookie they leave on your machine while you're logged out will eventually correlate to a login session and they'll have your browsing history anyway.
Facebook is the best thing that's ever happened to me. The people from my past that I really don't want to converse with are likely tied up in their simple little Facebook world by now. Let them wonder why I'm not on Facebook. Problem solved!
Reddit is at least aware of the inevitable failings of any successful community and lets me hide boring stories and collapse boring discussion threads.
Founder drops out, amasses nearly unimaginable legitimate wealth comparable to Gates' theft, then marries for love to an accomplished and attractive partner. His story so far should inspire any nerd going through the Startup Pit of Despair.
When I look at Mark, it's hard for me to look at him as a regular human being, he has so much people under his position I tend to forget guys like him can also get married and laugh about small jokes. With that much money, how do you get to trust anyone?, how do you talk to new friends knowing they're telling you the truth.
That's why I think he's some kind of cyborg. Well I wish him good, and I think he's made a great decisions by still keeping facebook under his control.
I mean, I know it's interesting to think about how you manage Facebook and a marriage at the same time, but this news doesn't seem god-thankingly urgent.
EDIT: Ah, sarcasm. The bane of net conversations everywhere.
Regardless of your individual opinion of Zuckerberg, it is really sad that this thread contains comments outside of "Congratulations". He is a large part of tech whether you like it or not, and should be considered a peer that merits nothing but support on his special day.
People should be happy for Zuck and Pricilla. Any claims by those who don't know Pricilla that this is other than for love should really get a check-up on their humanity. Not that they'll ever read this, but congrads to them both.
The title is fine, I had no trouble understanding it. The ambiguity of "married" did not lead me to believe that Mark acted as officiant in a wedding ceremony, nor did the open-ended past tense of of the term lead me to believe that Mark was married 150 years ago. If you can't access the page that the link points to, and are really concerned about the truthiness of the title, then there's this website called google.com that makes finding answers fairly simple. If you think that this is celebrity gossip and that searching for the truth would be a waste of time, then don't...
please don't think of her as "HIS WOMAN" (or him as her man). this implies ownership, and marriage is not about ownership. he might have worn it out of respect/love for her, yes.
You should study some history to understand why western society consider a woman to be owned by her husband. In many tribal religions, before the global spread of Abrahamic religion, had a different concept of what was norm arrangement for a man and woman to have a sexual relationship. For example, in many Arab tribes, women belonged to tents. Men would visit those tents and as long as he financed the tent he could have sexual intercourse with all the females in the tent. Daughter, mother, didn't matter. Men would stay at the tent temporarily. This obviously meant they had no concept of family like how we do. In Abrahamic religions and western society a woman belongs to her husband as opposed to a piece of property. In such a society, women were shunned as if they committed adultery if they refused sex to the man who is currently financing their tent. This was a part of a Persian communism that existed about 2000 years ago. Obviously with the success of Abrahamic religion we kept the terms but forgot the meaning behind the terms. I would love to be able to give more precise details but I haven't reviewed these historical topics since high school.
Does that somehow make it not sexist? You gave the history of it but the parent comment was not arguing history. I'm not sure what your comment has to do with the parent.
Yes it does. The term, in origin, is not a topic that discrimination applies too. It merely means that in our civilisation lawful sexual intercourse is viewed to be legal through an agreement in between the husband and wife, provided it meets our sexual morales (you can't marry many relatives). Thus, he owns the legal rights for his sexual intercourse to be considered lawful. Unlike in other civilisations, for example the Mazdakian, where women were property of the state in a communist regime. Allowing legal sexual relations on a temporary basis when state condition were met. Where a man could be having legal sexual intercourse with both a mother and daughter for a few weeks. Part of the motive was that it was seen unfair that regular citizens didn't have access to the king's harems to do as they desire. Obviously, this was extremely discriminatory against women and viewed them all as only sexual objects. This is one of the greatest achievements of Abrahamic religion that such doctrines are long ago abolished.
To stress that this was the type of ownership implied. Never has it been legal right for a husband to allow a third party to have sexual intercourse with his wife, at the third party's pleasure. Despite this being the simplistic understanding of the term "his wife" may imply this.
If you want to understand terms in it's simplistic understanding, then I think you better worry about terms like sunrise/sunset.
> Thus, he owns the legal rights for his sexual intercourse to be considered lawful.
What? Since when do you need to "own the legal rights" to perform sexual intercourse? Are you saying I cannot legally have sex unless I'm married?
I'm having a hard time following what you're saying, because most of your post is just rambling. The Mazdakian? Nothing to do with us. Abrahamic religion abolishing sexist doctrines? Are you kidding me? The Bible is full of extremely sexist views. It treats women explicitly like objects.
None of your post has anything to do with my parent comment, nor the original. I feel there is a pattern here, because all of your other posts in this thread have been the same. Right now, in 2012, a man referring to his partner as "his woman" (or a woman referring to her partner as "her man") implies ownership and has a negative connotation.
By legal rights I mean for your sex not to be classed as rape. I really don't know how to correctly explain this topic. Sorry. I didn't really study these topics in English.
Islam took over Persia and put an end to Mazdakian belief. This is a credit to Abrahamic religion. The society you were born in could have been very different had Mazdak's ideas won. The concept of family would not exist and the gene pool would have very few trees. The idea of monogamous relationships are a given in our society and this is built on the success of Abrahamic religion removing competing systems almost entirely out of the conscience of human thought.
In history one could find other competing systems and the Mazdakian is just one example.
One must remember the bible was written before it's ideas were successful. To re-interpret it's ideas are after it's success may lead one to the wrong conclusions about what it actually was trying to convey. It may appear to be a lot more sexist than what it actually meant.
Please stop that PC nonsense. Marriage is ownership -- they have a monopoly on each others sexual-ability and in the event of a divorce they will properly have to split the money fifty-fifty.
Marriage does not imply "monopoly on each others sexual-ability" (unless you mean marriage in strictly christian terms, for example), this is up to the partners to decide.
"His wife" or "his partner" may not imply ownership, but "his woman" most certainly does. Aside from all the cultural connotations, using the common noun "woman" instead of associating a relationship between them depersonalizes her.
The usage of "his woman" would be routed from translation of Bible from Hebrew. In Hebrew, there is only one word for (Ish) man, and husband, or (Isha) woman, and wife.
English translations translated freely taking preference for poetic sound.
So as long as the bible is part of English speaking culture the usage of woman as wife will be common.
Something I find interesting about Persian culture. In Persian the word Zan means both wife and woman, but there is another more formal word Khanom. Which is always to be used when speaking or referring to someone older than you. I wouldn't be surprised if this is due to the etymology of the two word being from different languages.
> The usage of "his woman" would be routed from translation of Bible from Hebrew.
Mmm, except we're not talking about a transliteration of a Bible verse. This is colloquial usage of the term "his woman" in the English language with respect to American culture, which implies ownership. This has absolutely-- and I mean absolutely-- nothing to do with Hebrew.
> So as long as the bible is part of English speaking culture the usage of woman as wife will be common.
And has nothing to do with what we're talking about. The term implies ownership, and the Bible takes a very "man owns woman" stance. I assume your intent was not to prove my point?
The formal definition may mean 'possession', but English doesn't always work like that. Sometimes we say or write things that depend on the context/geography/community for the true meaning. It's not black and white.
Also, I think tersiag was stressing the person for which he wore a suit, not that he wore a suit for HIS woman (instead of someone else's woman).
Mark's wife (yes, i think this expression is much better) is still not "his woman". no woman belong to no man, and vice versa. Priscilla is her own person, just as Mark is.
Agreed. Though I think the problem is not the "his", it's the "woman". "His wife" would sound fine. "HIS WOMAN" sounds like a caveman or Redditor talking.
Whether it's rational or not, this makes me like Zuckerberg a lot more. It seems like a good way to keep your head focused on what matters, to marry the same week that your company goes public.
This is very off-topic, but then again, the entire thread more or less is. So with that disclaimer: does anyone else think he looks like a much, much slimmer, younger Michael Caine?
I cannot comment on the content at all because I can't access the submission.
Pages submitted to HN should simply not be behind login walls, which is why I flagged this.
This thread already has multiple references to the fact that you have to log in to see the submitted post. There are many HN users without a FB account. For them, the headline of the submission cannot be verified by clicking on the link.
Although there is a large intersection between the two groups of HN and FB users, you don't have to be signed up with any other webservice in order to use HN. This is not only about FB. As a matter of principle posts to HN should be accessible for all HN users without requiring them to sign up with any other webservice.
However, this is up to PG and the HN community. It would be good if PG provided a guideline whether submissions behind login walls are accepted or not.
Is the difference you're implying the fact it's Mark Zuckerberg, the person whose company just went public and is a relatively famous Internet entrepreneur? I'm not trying to take a side, but I'm not sure which difference you're implying and which comments are an embarrassment. Could you expand?
do you feel smart about your comment? if you're not interested in a topic, don't click on it. why are you spending time and effort to comment on something you're not interested in?
Not really. So did he get married or did someone hack Zuckerberg's account to change status to married, or is it a joke, or is it something entirely different?
The title tells me nothing, and I should probably use a search engine to check what's actually going on.
And if it turns out Zuckerberg simply got married, I just wasted my time researching celebrity gossip.
However, it looks like Asimov's three laws could use an addendum: Be a good sport and a gentleman when significant things happen to people in your community. Apply soft-skill known as "heart".
(On a similar note, I've done some online math contests that gave the problems in Word .doc format. Once, on a collaborative contest, OpenOffice was not sufficient; there were images that got misaligned or didn't even display. I took the documents, sent them to an online Word -> PDF converter, and posted the results to the shared email account "for great justice". Things like not having Word should not be barriers to doing math contests.)
Dis-allowing links like this seems extreme. I think appending something like "[requires facebook]" to the title as a matter of etiquette would work.
As a kind of loose analogy, no one really has problems with links to pdfs, but you don't need to have a pdf reader to sign up for HN (and I often see the "[pdf]" notice appended to such links).
That's not an analogy. Anybody with a computer can get a PDF reader without giving your information to a third party. There many PDF readers, not just one.
I vote for disallowing links that require login for the reasons explained in grand parent's comment.
Chrome has gone a long way to alleviate my issues with PDFs, but a lot of people still absolutely do have problems with links to those - to the point that Scribd was successfully launched. As for FB, it has much worse penetration than PDFs, which are still near the pain threshold for general news.
I'd say disallowing them is may be too harsh, but posting them is simply impolite and users should avoid doing that. I'm not a FB user and these kind of links just waste my time.
I don't have Facebook, but the title says it all (shouldn't it be 'got married?' btw). I guess congratulations are in order for going public (with their commitment I mean)
Additional fun (and ambiguity): The verb "to marry" also means to perform the marriage ceremony. "Mark Zuckerberg married" could, in theory, mean Zuckerberg married two other people. "Got married" doesn't suffer from ambiguity and for that reason i think preferred.
Rules don't exist to for their own sake, they are an imperfect way of formalizing what would otherwise have to left to common sense. But sometimes, common sense obviously trumps the rules.
Incidentally, I suspect most bureaucracies emerge from a cargo-cultist/priest of a lost religion mentality where rules are enforced for their own sake without any insight or thought into what the rules were trying to achieve in the first place.
When you see the URL is facebook.com just assume it is behind a login wall and don't click it. The other 99.5% of people wont care because they have FB accounts. Whats the problem?
Chan's ring featured only a "very simple ruby," a source authorized by the couple to speak told the AP.
That explains why she isn't smiling :) . Seriously people, smile for crying out loud. You know billions of people will see that picture over the years.
eh, this comment seems like a fractal snapshot of the whole thread.
why on earth do you feel any kind of right to be telling some random people you don't know how to behave? why does hn feel the need to have some private moment from these people's lives on the front page? why does this matter to me, a hacker? but is a wedding private? isn't it a public statement? why does a hacker like zuckenberg (sp?) need to make a public statement like this (i've been living w the same person for 20 years and neither of us see a need to get married)? and why rings? what the kind of ancient property-related crap is that? but that gets back to public statements. and why can't he do his tie up - he looks a mess? and now am i as bad as the person i am replying to?
and most of all, why take a photo with their washing line in the background?
On the other hand the reality is that divorce does happen and for people with $20 billion fortunes is different. I wonder if the Google founders have prenups in place.
Though to be fair, if you have a lavish lifestyle and go from $20bn to $10bn, I suspect it's going to hurt a lot less than having say $4m and losing half.
It's not just about money. If he has a majority share, and she ends up divorcing him and taking half of whatever she can get, it may destabilize the company. At that point, it's not just about Mark and his wife, there are jobs and people's well being's hanging in the balance.
It may not be about the money. If Prescilla has played a major role in making Facebook the $100B company then its OK. However there is no point splitting the company in half, because she was married to the founder. There is no need to demonize prenups here.
Can you imagine if Mark had married a man? Now THAT would have been interesting, if only for the media reaction. Now trying to guess who would have been the perfect husband for him... :)
I believe Zuck believes Facebook is the vehicle for these announcements and interactions, ergo his play. The announcement via FB is fair and true. I think it's a good move.
I'm disheartened to see it right after the IPO. It's rare a wedding happens overnight, let alone an IPO, so it feels deliberate to me.
And yet, given how blindsided they were with Beacon and its ilk, I can imagine the circumstance being nothing more than.
Amazing!