WebProNews

As charts tracking Facebook's growth have gone up and up, it's only natural that the company's employee count would do something similar.  Now, in order to accommodate everyone, Facebook's taking over some offices in the Stanford Research Park.

An area of about 152,000 square feet should give the social network a bit of elbowroom.  No one's talking about the terms of the lease - it remains unknown how much Facebook's paying and how long it plans to stay there - but at least a couple other details are available.

First, Arden Pennell reports that Facebook may hold onto its previous site, and it intends to keep looking for a bigger, more permanent, campus, too.  Further growth is expected, after all, and given Facebook's corporate personality, we may yet wind up with something to rival the Googleplex.

Second, it seems Facebook's new offices will (at least in a historic sense) connect it to a large corporation.  Pennell writes, "The new site is a former Hewlett-Packard (HP) building later occupied by HP's instruments-manufacturing spin-off, Agilent."  So as a practical matter, there should already be a tech-suitable setup.

Everything else appears to fall into the category of "wait and see."  Facebook's probably getting a good deal in the current real estate market, though, and it's bold of the company to expand given the overall economy's state.