Facebook is planning to hire thousands of more employees over the next year. Engineers will be hired in Palo Alto, Seattle, and New York.

[Image credit: La Chiringa de Cuba]
In Cuba only 2% of the population has an Internet connection. But for those who do have a connection most likely have a lot of limitations. In Cuba, a Facebook replica called RedSocial recently launched and it is intended to be a “virtual meeting place for Cuban universities.” The word Facebook is actually in the domain name for the website too (facebook.ismm.edu.cu).

Facebook has acquired location sharing company Gowalla for an undisclosed amount according to sources with CNN. “We don’t comment on rumor and speculation,” responded a Gowalla spokesperson. Gowalla employees including the founder Josh Williams would relocate to Facebook’s offices in Palo Alto to work on the Facebook Timeline feature.

Facebook has announced that they will be building an engineering office in New York City. This is the first engineering office that Facebook has opened outside of the west coast. The NYC engineering office will open in early 2012.

Facebook has increased their character limit to 63,206 characters. This a substantial from their social media counterpart (Twitter) that offers only 140 characters. “In September, we increased the character limit on status updates to 5,000 characters. Today, we’re announcing that you can now write posts with more than 60,000 characters,” stated Facebook Journalist Program Manager Vadim Lavrusik. This also includes group messages and wall posts. [Vadim Lavrusik]

Sony has updated the interface of their BRAVIA smart TVs to support social networking and high-definition YouTube videos. The new BRAVIA firmware has support for Facebook galleries, messages, status updates, and links. There is a Twitter ticket that scrolls updates from your followers. YouTube has been on BRAVIA smart TVs, but the update now has HD support.

Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has written a blog post about how they have added two new roles on the company’s executive team. The two new positions are the Chief Privacy Officer (Policy) and the Chief Privacy Officer (Products). Erin Egan is now the Chief Privacy Officer (Policy) and Michael Richter is now the Chief Privacy Officer (Products). When creating new Facebook products, Egan and Richter will be ensuring that feedback from users and legislators is accounted for. These two new roles were created out of response that Facebook is submitting privacy check-ups by the FTC over the next 20 years. [Facebook Blog]

Facebook has acquired social networking software company WhoGlue. WhoGlue creates social networking software services for membership organizations including college alumni networks. WhoGlue even filed a patent called “Distributed personal relationship information management system and methods” in 2001, which is 3 years before Facebook launched.