Zuckerberg Meets PM on Visit

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: October 3, 2012 (Issue # 1729)

ALEXANDER ZEMLYANICHENKO / AP Medvedev shakes hands with Zuckerberg and receives a T-shirt as a gift at the Gorki residence near Moscow.

MOSCOW — Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg paid a visit to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Monday during a trip coinciding with the social network’s push to recruit programmers and tap coding talent in Russia.

Speaking with Medvedev at the tech-savvy official’s Gorki residence outside Moscow, Zuckerberg said he came to Moscow to check out the country’s programming talent for himself.

Noting that a Russian specialist won Facebook’s programming contest this year, Zuckerberg said his company has “been really impressed by the quality and talent and innovation that we’ve seen.”

“While I’m here, I’m going to be speaking at a Hackathon that’s happening, with a bunch of different companies and developers that are here, just to kind of encourage and help them build things on top of Facebook,” Zuckerberg told Medvedev.

The Hackathon is a brainstorming session where programmers create and demonstrate add-ons for Facebook. Monday’s session in Moscow at the Digital October technology conference center in the former Krasny Oktyabr chocolate factory was the last stop on Facebook’s World Hack tour this year.

Chris Rogers of Grayling Eurasia, Facebook’s press office in Russia, declined to give Zuckerberg’s schedule for Tuesday, except to confirm that the chief executive will address students at Moscow State University that evening.

During this trip to Russia — his first — Zuckerberg has posted photographs to his Facebook page, including a photo of himself and Medvedev shaking hands with the caption, “Good conversation with Prime Minister Medvedev.”