Facebook’s latest expansion plan is the opening of an Engineering office in New York by 2012.  The company plans to tap into  the technical talent available in this region, as well as establish an engineering presence in New York City.

“More than 800 million people around the world rely on Facebook, and more than half of them visit every day. Operating at such a large scale, and innovating as quickly as we do, we need to recruit the most talented engineers in the world,” said Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s Vice President of Engineering.

“New York has a strong history of innovation and is home to thousands of talented technical people, and we want them to help us solve the challenges of designing and building the next generation of Facebook,” he added.

Serkan Piantino, an engineering manager at Facebook who previously managed the engineering team behind Facebook’s News Feed and built the infrastructure behind Timeline, will lead the New York-based office.  Interested applicants may click here to view available positions  in new York.

But Facebook’s also looking to expand its services in a few other ways.  There’s a rumor floating around that Facebook has acquired Gowalla, a location-based social network, on December 2nd, though both parties declined to comment on the rumor.
When CNN broke the news, Gowalla CEO Josh Williams e-mailed the following statement to AllThingsD:

“CNN just broke the news that Gowalla has been acquired by Facebook. This story was leaked from an unknown souurce.”

“The ink on the deal is not dry, so our holding pattern is that we do not comment on rumors and speculation. I have another email penned that was ready to send you today, assuming you would get this news before the story was officially released.”

“But now it is all over Twitter, so you have likely heard. A longer email will be sent soon. Until then, I am so very grateful for what you have done to make Gowalla a success.”

Facebook Outdated

Even as Facebook looks for ways to move forward, some of its latest initiatives merely highlight the network’s downsides.  A couple of weeks back, it was reported that Facebook is hard at work in developing the Facebook phone dubbed Buffy.  I’m not really sure if everyone is excited about this one, since Facebook is available as an app on any smartphone.  It seems users are more eager to see when the Facebook Timeline will rollout.  Developers are anxious to try out their stuff on the new Timeline, but until now, only a few have this feature and developers worry that the release would be fragmented, leaving many developers out in the cold.  According to developers, Facebook said that it would before the year ends, but was then pushed back until January 2012.

Facebook Content and Security

Facebook, along with other internet companies, were asked by the government of India to pre-screen user content from India and to remove disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory content before it goes online.

Penn State researchers designed a new Facebook sign-up interface for apps to prevent users’ personal information from leaking through third party games and apps to hackers and identity thieves.  Many Facebook users aren’t aware that some apps alter their privacy settings.

One Facebook user is so dismayed that she can’t use Effin as her hometown, because Facebook deems it as too inappropriate.  Ann Marie Kennedy is baffled as how some individuals or groups use Effin or other curse words in their statuses or group name or username but denies her from listing it as her hometown.  Kennedy tried contacting Facebook regarding this matter, but no one has yet addressed the issue.