Facebook Raises $100M for Servers

Facebook, the rapidly expanding social networking phenomenon, purportedly raised a supplementary $100 million in funding this week, that will be used to purchase additional hardware to support the service’s expansion.

The company has previously said the whole amount of the new money will be used to obtain servers, to assist in accommodating the rapidly mounting numbers of new users, and fashionable plug-in applications, that have made the site one of the sensational stories of the social networking world.

The new funding is over and above the $360 million already raised by the company in the last seven months.

Recent information puts Facebook’s user figures at over 35 million in the US.

Approximations have put the company’s current data center capability at something like 10,000 servers.

The new money will provide the means to append approximately 50,000 more servers, leaving an abundance of room for expansion.

Facebook supposedly secured the loan without losing equity in the company.

The loan was made available through a venture arrangement with TriplePoint Capital, a Californian based lending company.

This is reportedly TriplePoint’s principal deal to date.

According to reports, Facebook has not revealed which vendor or vendors it intends to use for new servers; however the company has been a chief customer of Rackable Systems historically.

That company reported in up to date statements that 17 percent of its first quarter revenue, $11.5 million, came from Facebook.