eWeek.com reports that the social networking giant has announced plans to build an environmentally-friendly data center, its first, in Oregon.

“It is important to understand what a data center is and how it impacts your Facebook experience. A data center is a central location that houses thousands of computer servers, which are networked together and linked to the outside world through fiber optic cables,” Facebook's vice president of technical operations Jonathan Heiliger explained. “Think of a data center as essentially one very large computer that contains the collective computing infrastructure to make web properties, like Facebook, work.”

Learn more: Facebook Building Data Center in Oregon