Facebook Seeks to Return to Cambridge
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Famous Harvard-dropout and Facebook founder Mark E. Zuckerberg speaks to the press before attending a selective recruiting event intended to attract Harvard's best and brightest to careers at Facebook in November 2011.
Launched in a Kirkland dorm room, Facebook is now seeking 7,000 square feet of office space in the Kendall Square area, reports theĀ Boston Business Journal.
The new office space would be just a few miles from Harvard Square, and from the Phoenix Club, which may now find itself becoming Zuckerberg's personalĀ ping pong room.
The billion-user social networking company would staff the office with three dozen new engineers over the next six months as it attempts to gain a foothold in an area that is already home to Microsoft, Google, Nokia, and, of course, MIT.
To the dismay of Harvard CS enthusiasts, Facebook closed its last permanent outpost in Cambridge in 2006, two years after its infamous migration to Silicon Valley.
Despite Facebook's role in distracting us, bringing back the word "like," making online relationships a thing, and otherwise taking over our lives, we seem to "like" when the company pays homage to its Harvard roots, so it's a pity they'll be two T-stops away.
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Putting aside reasons of nostalgia, it does make sense that Zuckerberg wants Facebook's presence to Cambridge to be outside of the Harvard bubble this time around. A 70 square foot suite in Kirkland isn't cool. You know what's cool? A 7,000 square foot office.