As the founder of Facebook, you would have thought he would know how to update his relationship status.

But seven years after starting his relationship with Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg has finally got around to announcing they are going out.

The 26-year-old has updated his Facebook status to ‘in a relationship’ to reflect the fact he is taken.

He added that the change had been ‘long overdue’ but did not explain why he had waited so long.

Observers however have noted that often when couples become 'in a relationship' on the social network and ‘engaged’ status soon follows.

Zuckerberg and Chan started seeing each other when they were both studying at Harvard University.

Following the new update, Chan's Facebook page reveals that the pair started their relationship on November 7 2003, just days after Zuckerberg's infamous Facemash stunt at Harvard.

He was nearly expelled from the university after hacking into different colleges' websites and taking pictures of all the female students, placing them next to each other and asking other students to 'rate' their attractiveness.

The success the site had during the few days it was on the internet was his initial inspiration for Facebook.

Few details have emerged about the couple's private life together at their home in Palo Alto, California, as Zuckerberg is notoriously secretive.

Despite his youth Zuckerberg is worth $13.5billion (￡8.3billion), making him the 52nd richest person in the world, according to Forbes magazine - the second youngest billionaire in the world, behind Facebook co-founder and billionaire Dustin Moskovitz.

Chan has been with him for a large part of the time Facebook has existed, but it is unclear what role if any she has played in its development.

(Read by Lee Hannon. Lee Hannon is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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(Agencies)