Facebook plans to build a $1.5 billion data center in Altoona, Iowa, joining its existing facilities in Prineville, Ore.; Forest City, N.C.; and Luleå, Sweden, the Des Moines Register reported.
We're kicking off our upcoming Social Media Marketing Boot Camp with a special keynote presentation by Ella Chick (left), the digital producer at Anderson Cooper 360°. She'll discuss how the network uses social media for breaking news and leverages social media to draw attention to organizations and causes. Learn more about our program and register here. 
Facebook is going public with the results of its efficiency efforts at its data centers in Prineville, Ore., and Forest City, N.C., debuting two public dashboards that display real-time data for the data centers’ PUE (power usage effectiveness) and WUE (water usage effectiveness) levels.
With the 2013 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship tournament set to tip off Tuesday, Michael Bailey of the Facebook Data Science Team filled out his brackets with information on Facebook likes in a note on the Sports on Facebook page.
This past April, Facebook began operations at its second data center in the U.S., in Forest City, N.C., which joined its already existing facility in Prineville, Ore. But how does the social network deal with the differences in climate between the two locations?
Over the past year, Facebook has been on a rampage against users who either don’t exist or are using fake names. After all, advertisers want real people with real information behind those likes. The New York Times examined this issue, showing how pseudonyms can be used for good and for evil.
People all over the U.S. were posting about either President Barack Obama or Republican challenger Mitt Romney on Facebook during Election Day. But buzz about ballots wasn’t limited to the 50 states. Facebook released statistics Wednesday showing that the U.S. presidential election was popular in Canada, the U.K., and Australia.
Now that the 2012 presidential election is in the record books, we can start to examine more closely the role that Facebook played in the first “social election” and how the winners and losers used the platform in the waning hours of the race.
The latest example of Facebook users boasting about crimes they committed involves the 2012 presidential election, as a blog called Barracuda Brigade preserved an image of a since-deleted Facebook comment by a North Carolina man who claimed to have already voted for President Barack Obama four times, with a fifth on the way.
The dust has settled after the first presidential debate in Denver Wednesday night, and the Facebook-CNN Election Talk Meter has fresh insights on the melee in the Mile High City that are posted on the U.S. Politics on Facebook page.
As more and more middle school and high school students log onto Facebook, courts have had to reassess the definition of virtual free speech. Many younger members use Facebook to vent frustration, but when posts are aimed toward teachers and faculty members, where is the line drawn? A Minnesota court recently ruled in favor of a 12-year-old student who posted unfavorably about a school staff member on Facebook, citing that the school’s demand for her social media passwords violated First and Fourth Amendment rights.
