Though the opening bell has been rung and the Facebook IPO ceremony is over, trading on Facebook stocks has yet to commence. Facebook shares will begin trading at 11:30 EDT, and the stock is expected to rise significantly over the course of the day.
However, NASDAQ has just released the video of the bell-ringing ceremony, which was held in a courtyard at Facebook’s Menlo Park, California headquarters. In the video, you can see Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg count down and ring the NASDAQ bell while cheesy music plays:
Zuckerberg looks as if he thinks it’s all a dream. Of course, he and the rest of Facebook haven’t slept all night, which could explain the happy, yet glassy-eyed faces that make up much of the crowd. The bell-ringing was also the end of one of Facebook’s all-night hackathons, during which Facebook’s employees stayed on-campus overnight to come up with the next big idea for the Facebook website. These hackathons are a foundation of the culture Zuckerberg has tried to promote at his company. This particular hackathon was supposed to reinforce the notion that, even though the company is going public, there won’t be any changes to the Facebook lifestyle. The symbolism, though, of the same bell both ending the hackathon and beginning Facebook’s new corporate era is hard to miss. It will be interesting to see whether the company can keep its hacker spirit while striving to please investors on a quarterly basis.
NASDAQ has a Livestream set up to stream IPOs, bell-ringing ceremonies, and interviews. Any action happening today will be streamed on that channel, which can be seen below: