The Social

Facebook has simply gotten too big for downtown Palo Alto, Calif., where it has been headquartered since founder Mark Zuckerberg uprooted the company from dorm rooms at Harvard. With over 600 employees now on its payroll, Facebook will be moving to a bigger facility at the Stanford Research Park outside town--a former Hewlett-Packard building.

"This new space is the next step in our growth and positions us well to continue looking for a long term campus solution while also allowing employees to work together as much as possible," a statement from Facebook read. The company plans to complete the move in the first quarter of 2009. They will, however, probably keep the downtown headquarters around, both for space and nostalgia's sake.

"Palo Alto has been a great home for many start-ups and we are confident that with our move, other companies will occupy and thrive in the vacated spaces," the statement read. "We will likely continue to have space in downtown Palo Alto as well. We have loved our time in downtown Palo Alto and consider it part of the DNA here at Facebook. Many of our employees live in the area and will continue to be a part of the downtown community."

Facebook has, however, gotten rid of a housing subsidy offered to employees who opt to live in Palo Alto.

UPDATE: The Craigslist post in question has been flagged for removal.

A Craigslist ad for an available room in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan's pricey West Village claimed that the asking price was $1 per month--and a fresh batch of cookies every day. (As of Wednesday morning, the ad was flagged for removal and is no longer available on Craigslist.)

Funny, I didn't know he lived in the Village.

(Credit: Public Broadcasting Service)

Yeah, it's tongue-in-cheek. As Gotham gossip blog Jossip put it, "There's no way someone would really rent out a room in the West Village for $1 a month and daily fresh baked cookies. In the West Village, you could get at least $50 a month and daily fresh baked cookies."

But considering New York's wacky real-estate climate, where $1,000 per month for a room's rent is considered cheap, plenty of cash-strapped urbanites would probably take up either offer in a heartbeat.

"You would be sharing the (two-bedroom apartment) with me, and you must bake me cookies every day," the ad explained. "I will tell you what kind of cookies the night before, and you have until 6 PM the next day to have 50 of them baked and delicious for me."

OK, sounds doable.

"You may not use nutmeg unless I EXPLICITLY give you permission," the ad continued. "Violation of this rule will result in immediate eviction and denunciation unto God."

That's easy to remember. Just leave nutmeg off the shopping list.

But the picky eater goes on: "I do like cinnamon, however. Anise is banned, as are caraway, cardamom, and allspice. You may use vanilla extract, but not the bean. Walnuts, almonds, and filberts are approved, whereas peanuts, macadamias, and cashews are not. Raisins are encouraged."

OK, as long as chocolate's allowed.

After delineating even more requirements for the construction and presentation of the cookies, the advertiser gives instructions for interested tenants: "If interested, please send me your favorite recipe for cookies, a short poem about cookies, and a picture of nice-looking cookies."

Hold on, let me go grab my camera.

A look at the entrance to 770 Broadway from the north side of East 9th Street.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET Networks)

It'll be interesting to see how AOL chooses to classify its new corporate headquarters on 770 Broadway in downtown Manhattan. The historic building, formerly home to the Wanamaker's department store, spans an entire city block and now holds offices of one variety or another for companies as varied as J. Crew, Viacom and Billboard. And there's famously a K-Mart (one of Manhattan's few-and-far-between big-box discount retailers) on the ground floor. It's touted by owner Vornado Realty Trust as being "in the heart of the Village." Well, kind of.

Because so many of New York's neighborhoods have become iconic cities-within-a-city and hold rather weighty connotations about the people who live and work there, it's always interesting to see how a major company brands its office location. Google, for example, likes to talk about its Manhattan outpost as being in the design-savvy district of Chelsea. Locals, however, occasionally (OK, more than occasionally) snicker about how it's just a stone's throw away from the overpriced, Page Six-worthy Meatpacking District, which is better known for clubs with names like Cielo, PM, and Aer than for geeky Googlers with pythons on the loose.

770 Broadway is in a notably ambiguous location, to the point where AOL could really stake a claim to one of a handful of Manhattan locations depending on how it wants its new "advertising, not access" incarnation to be branded. Or it could go for the whole "at the crossroads" mystique. Five blocks north is the constantly crowded Union Square; a few blocks west is Washington Square Park; to the south is the retail-packed, not-really-a-neighborhood zone known as NoHo (North of Houston Street) East of 770 Broadway is Cooper Square, which really isn't much of a square anymore because of extensive development; it's an academic-friendly enclave due to the presence of Cooper Union and a number of New York University buildings, as well as multiple Starbucks locations.

But if you look further to the east, you can see the colorful strip that is St. Mark's Place, the western end of the East Village and home to a tome's worth of punk rock history as well as plenty of places to get an eyebrow piercing or a glass of cheap sake. It'd be a slight geographical inaccuracy for AOL to say it's found a new home in the East Village, and it'd make many of the liberal-minded residents cringe; but considering massive dot-coms' often unsuccessful affinity for branding themselves as the hip kids in town, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

A tip to AOL-ers moving to New York: If you take the 6 train to get to the office, when you leave the subway stop, look for the bright orange van that sells coffee. That's the Mud Truck. They make a tasty brew.

Looks like the "A" in AOL actually stands for "Advertising." The once-mighty online media company has announced a shakeup that will place ad revenue squarely in its corporate crosshairs, grouping its advertising properties--Advertising.com, as well as the recent acquisitions of Tacoda, Adtech, Third Screen Media and Lightningcast--into a new entity that it calls "Platform A."

Former Tacoda CEO Curtis Viebranz has been appointed executive vice president and president of Platform A, and a statement from AOL asserts that this is "the final stage in AOL's transition from an access business to a global, ad-supported Web company." Unwanted CDs in the mail, we hardly knew ya.

In addition, the Gotham tech world will be getting a new tenant: AOL is moving its corporate headquarters to New York City from its longtime home of Dulles, Va., emphasizing in its statement that it wants to be smack in the middle of the advertising world. Offices in Dulles as well as Mountain View, Calif., will remain open.

The company's new headquarters will be in leased office space at 770 Broadway in the NYU-heavy, Starbucks-friendly gray area between the Union Square, East Village and NoHo neighborhoods.

New Yorkers: That means those of you who use the N-R subway stop at 8th Street or the 6 stop at Astor Place may have some new commuting buddies in the near future.