Facebook’s new HQ will have a BBQ pit and a bike doctor. Beat that, Googleplex.

Facebook is about to have a high-value bargaining?chip when it comes to luring engineers to its ranks. The company has unveiled plans for a “West Campus” in Menlo Park, which, when combined with the existing “East Campus,” could rival the Googleplex as one of the largest, most awesome places to work.

Menlo Park City Council will get an update on the approval process for the new Facebook campus at a meeting tomorrow night. This will be a slow process. The West Campus requires an environmental review?since the area where it is being built is full of trees and is very close to marshland.?Menlo Park hopes to complete the draft environmental impact statement for the West Campus and hold public hearings by the end of 2011.?So far there haven’t been many objections from the Menlo Park community, which could use an economic boost from a company like Facebook.

Construction on the new West Campus probably won’t begin until 2013.

In the mean time. 1,500 Facebook employees are currently crammed into two buildings in Stanford Research Park. They are slowly making the move to the 57-acre former Sun Microsystems campus, dubbed “East Campus” (Highway 84 separates the two campuses). This month 500 employees transitioned to a renovated building on the East Campus where eight other buildings are being remodeled. As they are completed, they will be filled with up to 6,600 employees.

According to Facebook, the goal is to grow the company to 9,000 employees. The newly-announced 22-acre West Campus will help accomodate up to 2,800 workers with five buildings surrounding a central courtyard with a five-story parking deck.

Speaking of parking, Facebook will need lots of it. This isn’t a work-from-home culture. Facebook is based on a 10 hour day concept where employees are encouraged to work from 8:00am to 6:00pm and then go home to sleep. Facebook wants to tie the size of its permitted workforce to the number of rush-hour vehicle trips to the site.?Nine-thousand employees will need to get to and from this new headquarters, so Facebook needs a transportation strategy.

“We seek to provide transportation options that are both efficient for our employees and friendly to the environment,” a spokesperson for Facebook explains to VentureBeat. “Over forty-percent of our employees participate in our transportation program, which provides many alternatives to driving to work by yourself.”

To get away from single-driver parking, Facebook will offer employees shuttles, free Caltrain passes and van pools. There will also be bike commuting. Actually, a surprising amount of bike commuting.

“We’re doing a lot to promote bicycle commuting as it’s an excellent, green initiative,” says the spokesperson. Facebook is encouraging bike commuters by having showers and towel service in every building. There will be lockers for commuters, bike shelters and even a loaner-bike program for employees considering bike commuting. Facebook’s new campus will have a bike shop with a “bike doctor” to help repair and solve bike issues.

Once Facebookers get to work, they won’t have to leave.

“We look to provide our employees with the best working environment possible,” says the spokesperson. At the new campus there will be two cafés serving three meals a day, a coffee shop, a fitness center, open pit BBQ, a taco shack, a pizza stand and a salad bar. There will also be a doctor’s office and a movie theater.“Facebook strongly encourages a work/life balance with its employees,” adds the spokesperson. “This includes such benefits as 21 days of paid time off each year, the flexibility to work remotely, and unlimited sick days.”In terms of perks at least, it sounds like Google will have some competition at last.Next Story: Jawbone introduces LiveAudio to deliver 3D audio to Jambox?speakers
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Tags: Facebook headquarters

Companies: Facebook

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Facebook’s new in-line privacy tools sound a lot like Google+

Social networking site Facebook today announced that it is adding new tools to let users share content with specific groups of friends, rather than publicly with all of their friends.

The site is also moving most of its privacy settings so that they appear alongside what is actually going on in the site. For example, you can approve or reject a photo tag from the actual photo rather than having to open up privacy settings in your specific account settings page.

“A lot of the controls we are adding are not new, it’s all about making it more usable,”?Facebook product manager Kate O’Neil told VentureBeat.

The features sound a lot like those that appear in Google’s latest social network, Google+. Rather than sequester the privacy settings on a separate settings page away from the actual action on the site, Facebook is moving its privacy and sharing features straight to the main page. It removes a lot of the hassle of having to jump to different pages to tweak privacy controls.

“We’ve been working on this for over 6 months, working really closely with a bunch of privacy groups and users, and we’ve been building it for about six months or so,” O’Neil said. “When people feel comfortable with who they are sharing with, they share more and engage more with Facebook.”

Here are a few of the changes Facebook is making to its sharing and privacy controls. The company plans to roll the changes out over the next several days.

Specified content sharing — The site has added a drop-down menu on the window where you post a new piece of content. You can decide which friends or groups of friends can view the new content through that menu before you publish it. Those controls previously existed in a settings page that was a little more complicated to access.

Tagging approval — Facebook users will also get a chance to approve a new photo tag or publication tag before it goes live with the new privacy controls. You can send a notification to someone who has tagged you in a photo asking to take the photo down or manually remove the tag. Facebook also includes the option to block someone who has tagged a photo of you. Until you approve the tag, no one can view it on your profile.

Review mode — You can now also see how your profile looks as if it were viewed by a friend or a new user looking to add you as a friend. It’s a feature that has been available on business social networking site LinkedIn for some time — but that site treats your profile more like a resume.

Locations and editing — You can now add a location to any of your content posts, similar to what you can do in Google+. You can also edit content pieces and change who can view those posts after the post goes up, rather than having to delete the post and post it again under a smaller circle.

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Tags: content sharing, Google, in-line privacy, privacy, social networking

Companies: Facebook, Google

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