Twitter Has Moved Into Its New Office, And It's Gorgeous
It's a beautiful day in San Francisco: sunny but not too hot, a nice breeze but not too windy. — So a lot of Twitter employees had lunch out on the rooftop garden of their office. — Their brand-new office, that is …
Context & Ripple Effects
The move has been building for two years: Twitter left its SoHo outpost for Facebook's old Madison Avenue space in March 2011, and back in November 2010 the New York Times was already documenting how start-ups were following Twitter into its San Francisco neighborhood. The company formally exited 795 Folsom Street after two and a half years when it flew the nest into 1355 Market Street on June 10, 2012.
This follow-up piece — picked up on the Twitter Blog itself — is the victory-lap version of that relocation: employees lunching on the new building's rooftop garden. It lands in the middle of a deliberate rebranding burst, coming days after the new blue bird logo and the company's first-ever TV commercial during the Pocono 400, and alongside what the company confirmed as a year-long talent raid on Silicon Valley rivals.
First-order effects
- Twitter's roughly two-and-a-half-year tenancy at 795 Folsom ends, consolidating staff at 1355 Market Street just as its hiring push against Silicon Valley competitors needs a showcase facility.
Second-order effects
- Foursquare's own 2011 arrival in its very own SOMA office shows the pattern the NYT flagged in 2010 repeating: each anchor tenant makes the neighborhood more attractive to the next wave of consumer-web startups, tightening the San Francisco office market around them.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the consumer-web office stops being overhead and becomes a competitive weapon — amenity-rich headquarters deployed explicitly to win talent raids, pushing rivals to match square footage and perks rather than just compensation.
The trend: Consumer internet companies are converting San Francisco headquarters into recruiting and brand assets, with each marquee tenant pulling the next cohort of startups into the same neighborhoods.