The social networking giant Facebook Inc., which started in a Harvard University dorm room nine years ago, is reportedly shopping for office space in Kendall Square. The Boston Business Journal reported Wednesday that the company is looking for space for about 40 people in the technology hotbed, potentially joining a steady stream of other West Coast firms that have either recently opened or are planning offices in the neighborhood, including Twitter Inc., Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc., and Google Inc.
Facebook declined to comment.
Local commercial real estate brokers said many of the nation’s biggest technology firms now want to be located near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to better compete for the engineering talent coming out the school.
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Based in Menlo Park, Calif., Facebook has several employees in Boston located at Workbar, a shared working space across from South Station. When the company’s chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, was in Boston on a recruiting trip in 2011, he said that Facebook may open a local office “at some point soon.”
Michael B. Farrell can be reached at michael.farrell@globe.com.