It’s pretty much confirmed at the moment. Twitter, according to just about every employee at SEO.com and the people running lines to the building, is building their Salt Lake City-based hosting facility in the old Linux Networks offices right next to SEO.com in Bluffdale.
Shortly after my last post about the new job opening in Salt Lake listed by one of Twitter’s employees over the project, a flood of tweets and comments from employees at SEO.com, a well-reputed search marketing company in Utah all reported they were seeing activity in the old Linux Networx building next to them. After some questioning, Ash Buckles, SEO.com’s Director of SEO confirmed via direct message on Twitter that 3 different workers laying line from the street to the building had confirmed that the building was indeed Twitter’s. While still hearsay, I’d say that, in addition to other confirmations by the Salt Lake Tribune (thanks Joseph Scott), pretty much gives us a solid witness by multiple sources that is where it will be. The kicker is it’s right next to “Camp Williams” (Twitter’s CEO is Ev Williams). Of course it’s right next to a major Prison as well.
Linux Networx was acquired by SGI in 2008 as it closed its doors and laid off all its staff. Linux Networx was a company that built HPC Clustering solutions, and based on some of the employees I know that have worked there, had some of the smartest employees I’ve ever worked with. The building has remained mostly vacant since then. It appears that Twitter very well could be changing that, with “large cranes”, “lost power”, and all sorts of construction happening at the complex as it prepares its expansion.
As I mentioned earlier today this is great news for Utah as it refills what was once a vacant building from laid-off workers and again re-employs many more for a well-recognized brand around the world. Twitter will join the NSA, Ebay, FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.com, and Oracle in adding major hosting facilities to Utah’s already rich line of talent and economic solutions. In the end this is great news for Twitter too, as it can hopefully finally accomodate its ever expanding user base as it grows globally at an immense scale. One can only wonder what other companies will follow suite?
I have contacted Twitter for comment and am awaiting their response. (Update: Twitter’s response was, “we’re not commenting on the location of the data center or any other details outside of the info included in our post last week.”)
Image Courtesy Google Maps
