First Facebook office in Asia

Social networking website Facebook is expanding its operations worldwide and it is opening its first office in Asia in Hyderabad, India.

Announcing the move on its official blog Monday, Facebook said they are growing their operations and teams to support their web users around the world.

Just last week, Facebook announced plans to invest in a new Austin, Texas, office.

With more than 400 million users, the world's top social network has felt the need to have multiple support centres in a variety of time zones so that "we can provide better round-the-clock, multi-lingual support."

The Hyderabad office is an important development for Facebook, according to the announcement. The company, co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, has experienced phenomenal growth.

The blog post states that 70% of the people using Facebook come from outside the U.S.

"Having an international presence and support system is therefore crucial in continuing to expand and connect," says the blog.

The new offices join Facebook’s main headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., as well as the office in Dublin, Ireland.

More than 8 million of Facebook's total users are in India, Facebook's director of global online operations, Don Faul, said in his post on the Facebook blog.

Incidentally, Internet powerhouse Google and software giant Microsoft also have offices in Hyderabad where they employ Indians to work on everything from writing software codes to providing customer services at lower salaries than in developed countries such as in the U.S.

Facebook also has offices in Atlanta; Birmingham, Michigan; Chicago; Dallas; Detroit; New York; Venice Beach, Calif.; Washington, DC, as well as in Milan; Paris; Stockholm; Sydney and Toronto. - Markk