The Facebook juggernaut rolls on – boosting staff by 50%

Is the recession causing you problems? Your name obviously isn’t Mark Zuckerberg. The Facebook CEO says he’s planning to boost the company’s staffing levels by 50% this year.

Quoted by Bloomberg, Zuckerberg gives some interesting insights into the company’s plans. He explains that because “No-one else is hiring”, it’s the perfect time to expand by sucking up all that unemployed talent.

Zuckerberg doesn’t go into detail as to what exactly all these new employees will be doing but the very fact Facebook is expanding when so many others are cutting costs shows that Facebook is still serious about its (seemingly overblown) goal to reach one billion users.

Despite the staffing boost and the recent acquisition of FriendFeed, the company isn’t going crazy with its spending. Explaining the company’s recent move into rather modest accommodation (dubbed “The Bunker”), Zuckerberg explains that “The thing I want to remind people of is we’re way closer to the beginning than the end”. The company is still spending carefully as it aims to make a profit for the first time next year.

Although Facebook is a younger company, it’s interesting to compare the Facebook approach to Myspace. Myspace expanded quickly, with a plush HQ and a large international workforce. Economic realities finally hit home and it had to cut back. Facebook has already pushed past Myspace to have more users and more traffic.

If Zuckerberg plays his cards carefully and learns from the mistakes of his rival, that one billion user target might not be so overblown after all.