Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook ring in IPO with all-night hackathon

By Jessica Guynn

May 17, 2012 12 AM PT

Mark Zuckerberg was not kidding about Facebook’s hacker culture.

The night before the chartbusting initial public stock offering, engineers won’t be counting their Facebook dollars. They’ll be doing what they have always done: Hack.

Facebook will pull an all-night hackathon that will end when Zuckerberg rings the Nasdaq’s opening bell from Facebook’s Menlo Park campus.

Facebook defines hacking as “building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done.” Seems fitting since Facebook is about to test the boundaries of the stock market.

TechCrunch says about 1,000 Facebook employees have already RSVP’d to an internal event page. A few 100 will take part in the hackathon. Hackathons are a celebrated tradition at Facebook and have resulted in some key features, including the profile redesign Timeline. Close to 2,000 are expected to be on hand when Zuckerberg rings the Nasdaq bell.

The event is a reminder to the troops not to get distracted by the frenzy surrounding the IPO that prices Thursday and begins trading Friday.

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