Facebook Details Menlo Park Plan
August 25, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
A vision of Facebook’s new home in Menlo Park is beginning to come into focus, with a newly released city report illustrating a portion of what the social networking giant plans to build for its extensive workforce.
The report details the prospective outlook for development on the western segment of the Facebook property across Highway 84 from the company’s future headquarters at the intersection of Willow Road and Bayfront Expressway.
The 22-acre site will be connected to the larger eastern portion of the campus by a tunnel under Highway 84, which would create easier access between sites for employees.
Travel will become even easier if the company installs a proposed moving track next to the walkway.
Last month, the company’s first 20 employees moved from Palo Alto onto the company’s new East campus property, which was purchased form Sun Microsystems in February.
At the beginning of August, more than 500 employees had moved to Menlo Park. And the company is expecting more than 1,400 will complete the transition by the end of the year.
Facebook is currently permitted to house up to 3,600 employees on the eastern portion of the campus, but Menlo Park business development director David Johnson has indicated the company may ask to raise the cap as its workforce grows.
Menlo Park City Council members Tuesday night accepted the most recent report that details some of the plans for the company’s headquarters.
The approved report shows that under the control of Facebook, the thoroughfare formerly known as Network Circle around the perimeter of the eastern campus will be changed to Hacker Way.
City staff is currently drafting the necessary Environmental Impact Report, which will explore the proposed development’s impact on the surrounding area. The report is due to be released in the late fall.
Construction of the five office buildings and one West campus parking garage is not slated to begin until 2013. Improvements on the existing facilities at the larger, 57-acre eastern site are already underway.
The Facebook campus will likely eventually take on the look of many other leading Silicon Valley tech companies in which employees are offered an extensive variety of amenities.
Furthermore, it is expected that Facebook may attempt to develop a community outreach program with local businesses in Menlo Park in which vouchers will be offered to Facebook employees that can be redeemed for goods and services from local vendors.
Johnson said he expected, should such a plan be developed, that it may begin with local restaurants and cafes but could be extended into other industries as well.
The intention of such a program would be to facilitate a relationship between Facebook employees and the greater Menlo Park community, said Johnson.
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Wave of 40000 tweets followed East Coast earthquake
August 25, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
WASHINGTON |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Just one minute after the 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck in Virginia on Tuesday and shook much of the eastern seaboard, an online aftershock of 40,000 tweets hit the internet.
Meanwhile, the National Hurricane Center got an additional 15,000 “likes” on Facebook ahead of Hurricane Irene’s advance.
Social networking sites are increasingly critical to reporting and responding to such disasters, the Department of Health and Human Services, the American Red Cross, and the National Weather Service said in a Facebook Live event on Wednesday.
Surveys published on Wednesday found a majority of Americans believe response agencies should be monitoring social media, Director of Disaster Services at the American Red Cross Trevor Riggen said in the videoconference.
Nearly 40 percent of the American public expected help to come in less than an hour when such a request was posted after a disaster, and the American Red Cross said the Internet has become the third most used tool for disaster reporting.
“As you can imagine the influx of social media and use of social media in disasters has really sprung up over the last few years,” said Riggen, who reported that just after Tuesday’s earthquake he texted, posted on Facebook and then tweeted.
“I think that’s the sequence the public is going through.”
Almost a fifth of the American public uses Facebook as a trusted source during disasters and nearly a quarter uses social media to communicate with loved ones after an event.
SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY
NWS Deputy Director Laura Furgione said each of its 120 offices now have Facebook, along with the National Hurricane Center which had 69,054 “likes” on Wednesday afternoon and is currently monitoring Hurricane Irene.
“They have been using social media to help us get the message out,” said Furgione. “Hurricane Irene is coming up the East coast and folks need to be thinking about – hopefully they’re already thinking about – ‘what is our plan?’”
The NHC has upgraded Irene to a Category 3 storm and projected it to hit North Carolina’s Outer Banks Saturday.
Health and Human Services posted a $10,000 contest Monday to create a Facebook application for disaster preparedness.
Stacy Elmer, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response of HHS, noted telecommunication challenges following the quake as a social media advantage.
“We’re trying to decompress our communication systems,” she said. “And then the people that really need to use them – our emergency responders, people trapped in the rubble – can have a chance to use them.”
Authorities anticipate social networking will continue to be critical to the public’s preparedness for disasters.
“Preparedness has always been a challenge, for years,” said Riggen. “On a day like yesterday when you had both the earthquake and the hurricane coming up the east coast, that gets people’s attention.”
Like the weather, the social media technology is constantly changing, Elmer said. “If this is constantly evolving, we are thinking, how do we keep up with the change, instead of being behind it?”
(Editing by Cynthia Johnston)