FB EDucator

Facebook on Tuesday announced its fourth owned and operated datacenter will be in Altoona, Iowa. The company plans to “break ground” this summer and begin serving user traffic in 2014.

For those keeping count, Altoona becomes number four after Prineville, Oregon; Forest City, North Carolina; and Luleå, Sweden. The data center will thus also be the third one for the company in the US.

As the others, the Altoona facility will also feature the company’s Open Compute Project server designs and outdoor-air cooling system. Yet Facebook says it also incorporate “evolutionary improvements” to the building design, networking architecture, and more. Facebook also claims that Altoona “will be among the most advanced and energy efficient facilities of its kind” when it is complete.

Facebook explains why it needs to keep building bigger and better data centers as its userbase expands and they continue to interact with more content:

In the coming years, as our service continues to grow and people share and connect in more ways, we need to make sure that our technical infrastructure also continues to scale. Our goal is not just to deliver you a fast, reliable experience on Facebook every day – we also want to help make connectivity a universal opportunity. Our data centers are essential for making that happen.

In fact, Facebook goes as far as to say Altoona will help in its push “to bring the next billion people online.”

More to follow.