All aboard the Facebook ferry.
The social network launched a private ferry service last week that will shuttle employees between San Francisco and Redwood City, just a few miles from company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the shuttle on Wednesday, which the company is calling a "water taxi."
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Facebook plans to test the shuttle during a 90-day pilot period, at which point the company will reevaluate the service. The boat is a catamaran that holds 30 people, and comes equipped with perks such as Wi-Fi, coffee and snacks, according to the spokesperson.
This isn't the first time that a company has shuttled employees via water taxi. Google announced its own commuter ferry in early January, and completed a 30-day pilot program last week. The company is now evaluating whether or not the service should come back later this year.
The Google ferry appears to have been much larger than the Facebook taxi, holding 150 people, including deck seats. The Google ferry also had perks such as Wi-Fi.
The ferries represent an effort by Bay Area tech companies to find alternative ways to transport employees to and from the office. Many companies, including Google, Facebook, Apple and Cisco, use employee buses to transport San Francisco residents to company offices down in the Valley.
These buses have served as a point contention in recent months, with protester citing them as symbols of growing economic disparity in San Francisco. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency decided in late January that the city will soon charge companies that use public bus stops to pick up employees.
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