Since I'm kind of tied up for the trading day, I figured I'd write a post about Facebook's headquarters as an interesting anecdote post. After all, FB's founder lives just a few blocks from me, and the headquarters of his firm is just a short bike ride from here. What lies between here and there is kind of interesting.
Look at the map below. The blue arrow denotes where Mark lives. It's a nice house, but I imagine many of you reading this live in something nicer (here in the Silicon Valley, we try to be understated – – even 27-year old zillionaires). Crescent Park is one of the two "rich" neighborhoods in Palo Alto (the other being Old Palo Alto, not shown here). Another nice zone is Lindenwood, marked with the purple arrow (it's kind of obviously a nice part of town – in this case, Menlo Park – because the distance between the streets is much greater).
The red arrow marks Facebook's huge headquarters, formerly occupied by Sun Microsystems. The interesting thing is that the town between HQ and Mark's house is East Palo Alto, marked in green, which is pretty much a shithole less attractive community. In the early 1990s, it was literally the murder capital of the United States (percentage-wise). I find it pretty interesting that some of the richest people in the world butt up right against some a crummy area.
The HQ, incidentally, is shown below from a satellite view. It's huge, and they've totally dolled it up for the soon-to-be zillionaires that work there.
And we you approach the entrance……the sign!
I admit it's pretty cool living a stone's throw from all of this. My only personal benefit will be it'll goose up the value of my house. But, besides that, I'm just going to be a very interested observer to see what unfolds in the coming months and years. I never imagined, just eight years ago when I passed a little sign hanging outside an office soliciting programmers for "thefacebook.com" that it would become this huge.
