Facebook hosts all-night Hackathon leading up to IPO

Fun story from the company’s big day

Leading up to today’s stock debut, Facebook employees weren’t glued to their TV sets watching CEO Mark Zuckerberg ring Wall Street’s opening bell: they were busy hacking away on their computers.

You see, in honor the Facebook IPO, the company held an all-night employee hackathon:

Facebook’s Hackathon 31 was an all-night event held at company headquarters.

Aptly titled Hackathon 31 , what with this being the 31st official Hackathon at Facebook, there is one rule that applies to this all-night event: employees must work on a project that they don’t normally do in their position at Facebook (this is a great chance to see account reps try their hand at coding / engineering). Groups of people work together on a new, innovative product (generally computer-based), that then gets presented in front of all the participants, and a “winner” is crowned.

Facebook’s Hackathon is a long-standing tradition at the company, but it’s not an entirely unorthodox event within the local community. As a matter of fact, several other Silicon Valley companies host similar “hacking” events. Sure they’re fun, but the businesses recognize them as a unique way to generate fresh concepts that could one day lead to new products.

Case in point: Facebook’s Timeline feature came from one of the company’s hackathons.

Hackathon 31 started yesterday at 7pm PST and ended this morning when Zuckerberg rang the Wall Street opening bell. All Facebook employees were encouraged to participate, though they did not have to. Anyone who did take part came away with a shirt.

Check out the collection of photos from Hackathon 31 below:

Pre-IPO Mark Zuckerberg Q&A event held at Hacker Stadium