14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook is expanding once again, but, this time, it's not by adding more users or features, it's by adding more offices, outside of the US, that is. The company is now announcing it will open offices in Hyderabad, India, which will focus on providing tech support for the site's 400 million users and counting. The company is also opening up new offices in Austin, Texas.
"As more and more people share and connect on Facebook, we are growing our operations and teams to support them around the world. Just last week, we announced plans to invest in a new Austin, Texas, office, and today in India we unveiled our intentions to open an office in Hyderabad," Don Faul, director of global online operations at Facebook, wrote.
"Both of these offices will allow us to better serve the more than 400 million of you now using Facebook worldwide, as well as our growing number of advertisers and developers. We are now hiring people to join the online sales and operations teams that we're forming in these new locations," he added.
Facebook is playing the diversity card on this one, claiming that its 400 million users worldwide prove that it is an international operation and, as such, needs to have a presence in various locations around the world. It also says that 70 percent of users come from outside of the US, almost 300 million, and they need to have support in their own languages.
Of course, what Facebook isn't saying but is obvious is that it chose the location not necessarily for its diverse user base, but rather for the cheap wagers there. Outsourcing tech support to India is so common, that it's hardly surprising to anyone. In fact, the city Hyderabad is very sought after by US tech companies, with Microsoft, Google, Amazon, HP, Dell, Oracle and plenty of others having offices in the region.