To be clear: nothing’s been confirmed, and no timeframe’s even been hinted at.  But people have at least gone on the record.

Prineville City Manager Steve Forrester told John Letzing, "What they [Facebook] have indicated to us is they would like to continue with expansion, which would require a second building just like the one they just built."

Then Ken Patchett, who Facebook put in charge of the first data center, semi-confirmed, "If our business requires it, we’ve made the plans to do that."

Facebook’s been on something of a data center spree since early last year.  First it announced the Prineville data center.  Later, the company decided to double the facility’s size.  Then in November, it committed to building a data center in Forest City, North Carolina, as well.

So we’ll keep an eye out for announcements regarding a second groundbreaking in Prineville.  With the 120 or so acres Facebook owns in the area, the company could definitely make something happen.

Stefan Apitz, LinkedIn’s senior director of operations, explained on the corporate blog that the new data center is "more robust," and "not only helps us handle the increasing traffic load on our servers, but to also provide more redundancy in case of an emergency."

Apitz then promised, "Moving forward, this lets us offer you an even more reliable service that millions of professionals are using every day to get their job done."

That makes for good news all around.  LinkedIn users aren’t likely to object to the idea of 100 percent uptime, after all, and LinkedIn is sure to be pleased about the growth that made the new data center necessary.

Then one more point that’s necessary to consider is the fact that LinkedIn could afford an additional data center, rather than try to scrounge for spare parts or just hope for the best.

The new data center is located in Los Angeles, by the way, whereas LinkedIn’s other data center is located in Chicago.

UPDATE: While we can still access LinkedIn without issue, several commenters have been good enough to point out that the site now seems to be experiencing problems, and Twitter Search bears out their observations.  Thanks for the tips, everybody.

The LEED certification program is a widely recognized system of encouraging sustainable building practices, and Gold is the second-highest certification level, falling only below Platinum.  It’s not at all easy to get.

A post on eBay’s Green Team Talks blog explained, "Topaz becomes one of only a small handful of data centers on U.S. soil to achieve LEED Gold – a pretty major accomplishment considering the availability and security requirements needed to run eBay AND PayPal’s servers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year."

Then the post described some of Topaz’s green features, which include "[t]he collection of rainwater to offset city water use," "[t]he ability to use low outside air temperatures to reduce electrical costs for cooling our servers," "[t]he use of low emitting materials throughout construction," "[t]he use of over 20% recycled and regional building materials in the facility construction," and "[t]he use of a chemical free water treatment system."

The Topaz data center is located outside Salt Lake City, Utah, by the way, and opened earlier this year.

The Rutherford Data Center should be built in Forest City, North Carolina, to be exact, at the site of a former Mako Marine building.  Facebook purchased 150 acres from Rutherford County for $3.1 million to make this happen.

As for what sort of timeframe Facebook has in mind, March of 2012 has been set as the target date for the facility’s completion.  Meanwhile, the company expects the construction work will provide jobs for 250 people, and the finished data center should employ between 35 and 45 individuals on a full-time basis.

That last fact may not sound impressive, but North Carolina Congressman Patrick McHenry is rather pleased with the whole arrangement.  In a statement, he said, "Facebook’s success has brought them to Forest City to make a great investment in this community.  These are the jobs Western North Carolina needs to push forward in an economy increasingly dependent on new technologies."

Anyway, a little more information (along with a smattering of photos) is available here if you’re interested.

One last thought: this announcement may signal that Facebook has something very interesting up its sleeve.  Since the site already has over 500 million users and works just fine, a second brand new data center seems a little hard to explain in terms of some new profiles here and there.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, New York Governor David Paterson, and Senator Charles Schumer (along with a few other politicians) will all participate in a ribbon-cutting ceremony today.  Bartz stated, "We’re thrilled to unveil our world-class data center in Lockport and take an active role in the community."

As for some other details, the data center covers 155,000 square feet, and the site will also support a Yahoo Operations Center and a Global Service Staff.  This should allow for the creation of as many as 125 fulltime jobs.

Then, to get into the data center’s efficiency, it’s supposed to use at least 40 percent less electricity and 95 percent less water than a typical data center.  And that translates to enough energy to power 9,000 New York households for a year, plus a lifetime of drinking water for 200,000 people.

The Department of Energy awarded the facility a $9.9 million sustainability grant as a result.

Governor Paterson said, "I am excited to see that Yahoo! is well underway with their investment in New York State and look forward to seeing the many opportunities this will bring to Niagara County and the broader Western New York community."

A campaign to "get Facebook to unfriend coal" has been building momentum for some time, and it appears to have reached a critical mass of sorts today.  Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International, actually published an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg this morning.

In it, Naidoo stated, "Greenpeace and over half a million Facebook users have expressed significant concerns with your decision to power this data center with dirty coal-fired electricity from PacificCorp, which runs an electricity mix that is disproportionately powered by coal, the largest source of global warming pollution."

Naidoo would prefer it if Zuckerberg and Facebook would "[c]ommit to a plan to phase out the use of dirty coal-fired electricity to power your data centers" and "[u]se your purchasing power to choose locations that allow you to rely on only clean, renewable sources of electricity," instead.

These requests aren’t likely to have much effect in the short term; the Prineville data center is already under construction and Facebook hasn’t announced plans to build anything else.  Still, it’s possible Greenpeace and its supporters will influence the social network to be a little more Google-y in the future, turning to solar and wind power.

Also, in fairness to Facebook, the company’s already taken the issue of energy conservation into consideration to some degree.  On August 20th, a post on the Prineville Data Center page detailed several power-saving technologies that the facility will employ.

UPDATE: Barry Schnitt, director of policy communications at Facebook, left a comment further describing his company’s stance on environmental responsibility and energy conservation.

Early this year, Facebook committed to building the custom data center (its first).  The center was supposed to be 147,000 square feet in size, and the first quarter of 2011 was set as the target for completion.

Only Facebook’s apparently been growing much faster than forecast.  That’s the most logical reason for why the company announced in a note, "The expansion will add another 160,000 square foot shell to the 147,000 square foot facility now being built."

Further development is perhaps likely, too.  The note continued, "As business needs dictate, the shell will be built out to accommodate more servers."

Anyway, the original space remains on track, the first expansion is supposed to be finished in early 2012, and the data center is still intended to employ just 35 people.

Facebook hasn’t shared any financial details relating to the construction of the facility.

The ASHRAE standard is meant to increase data centers’ energy efficiency, and the group of tech corporations opposed to it has no problem with that goal.  The issue, it seems, is that the standard instructs companies how to go about becoming more efficient.  And that it carries some weight, since it’s often incorporated into building codes.

So the open letter explained, "For example, the standard requires data centers to use economizers – systems that use ambient air for cooling. In many cases, economizers are a great way to cool a data center . . . but simply requiring their use doesn’t guarantee an efficient system, and they may not be the best choice.  Future cooling methods may achieve the same or better results without the use of economizers altogether.  An efficiency standard should not prohibit such innovation."

Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Nokia, Dupont Fabros Technology, and the Digital Realty Trust would prefer to just see required levels of efficiency established.

Whether or not they can win this argument may have a significant effect on the companies’ technical capabilities, or at least the amount of money they have to spend in order to achieve certain feats.  We’ll be sure to report any significant developments.

Let’s start with the personnel announcement.  Ken Patchett has worked for Compaq, Microsoft, and most recently, Google, which pretty much establishes his competency.  Also, he’s dedicated enough to Facebook (and to his family) to take the job at the Prineville data center while allowing one of his children to finish up high school in Hood River.

One other important point is that Facebook has stated that Patchett is the data center’s manager "effective immediately," which takes us to the subject of how quickly it’s being built.

The photo you can see below says a lot.  The data center isn’t supposed to be open until early next year, and of course, there’s a lot more to the setup process than building a roof and four walls, but it’s at least hard to imagine that Facebook’s running behind schedule.

Hat tip goes to Rich Miller.  We’ll try to provide further updates as Facebook moves beyond the concrete-and-steel stage and starts to bring in servers.

Indeed, according to a post on Yodel Anecdotal, Jerry Yang, Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman, La Vista Mayor Douglas Kindig, Attorney General Jon Bruning, and Nebraska Congressman Lee Terry made appearances.  That’s not a bad turnout.

As for some more substantial details relating to development, the data center is located in 180,000-square foot building, and the building is located in a small city called La Vista (hence Kindig’s involvement).  It’s expected to employ about 50 people, and without giving away any trade secrets, Yahoo’s implied that the data center’s rather "green," environmentally speaking.

Not as much is known about the sales and customer support call center – it presumably took less time and money to set up, thereby attracting less attention – but it’s located in Omaha, and should help a few people earn paychecks, too.

One possible interpretation of all this activity is that Yahoo’s very optimistic about its future even as Microsoft’s stepping in to influence the search and advertising side of things.