Facebook Launches Ferry Service for Employees

Facebook has become the latest San Francisco Bay Area technology company to launch ferry service for its employees.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports (http://bit.ly/1iSDd1M) the social networking giant began chartering a 30-person water taxi Feb. 4 to take employees from San Francisco to Redwood City. The taxi is free and runs round-trip service on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Workers are then taken by bus to the company's campus a little farther south in Menlo Park.

The company told the Chronicle it is testing the ferry service for 90 days.

Google also tested ferry service for employees but abandoned the experiment last week after a month.

The ferry services come as technology companies have faced criticism for running private buses to pick up employees in San Francisco.

Here’s a List of 58 Gender Options for Facebook Users

Facebook introduced dozens of options for users to identify their gender today – and although the social media giant said it would not be releasing a comprehensive list, ABC News has found at least 58 so far.
Previously, users had to identify themselves as male or female. They were also given the option of not answering or keeping their gender private.
User’s can now select a “custom” gender option.
“There’s going to be a lot of people for whom this is going to mean nothing, but for the few it does impact, it means the world,” Facebook software engineer Brielle Harrison told the Associated Press. Harrison, who worked on the project, is in the process of gender transition, from male to female.
Facebook will also allow users to select between three pronouns: “him,” “her” or “their.”
The following are the 58 gender options identified by ABC News:

Facebook Users, Others React to Gender Options

Facebook announced Thursday that its 159 million U.S. users now have dozens of options for completing the gender question on their profiles. The social media giant has been working with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights groups to expand the choices beyond male and female. The result: a "custom" option that lets users pick from about 50 terms, including transsexual, androgynous and intersex.

The Associated Press asked Facebook users and others for their reactions:

Jay Brown, 35, of Maryland, changed his gender on Facebook to Trans Male on Thursday once the option became available.

"Looking at my Facebook profile, people see photos of my 3- and 5-year-olds, my love for running and that my wife had a birthday yesterday," Brown told the AP. "They saw a dad, a runner, a husband. The 'male' selection was right but it wasn't all there was to me. Today, Facebook is letting me bring more of my identity to the table."

Jeff Johnston, issues analyst for Focus on the Family, an influential national religious organization based in Colorado Springs, Colo., said just because people lobbying for the change say there are an infinite number of options, that's not true.

"Of course Facebook is entitled to manage its wildly popular site as it sees fit, but here is the bottom line: It's impossible to deny the biological reality that humanity is divided into two halves - male and female," Johnston told the AP.

In new profile feature, Facebook offers choices for gender identity

A portrait of the Facebook logo in Ventura, California December 21, 2013.

 For the first time, Facebook Inc is letting users of its online social network identify themselves as a gender other than male and female.
The basic user profile for members in the United States now includes a customizable category among the gender types that users must select, the world's No.1 Internet social network announced on Thursday, the day the feature became available for U.S. members using the site's English-language version.