By Daniel Geiger
Another big name in new media is looking for office space in Manhattan.
Twitter, according to several sources familiar with the company, is working with brokers from the real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle to find between 10,000 to 15,000 square feet of space for a New York headquarters.
The search follows reports last September that indicated the micro-blogging service, which is based in San Francisco but has expressed ambitions to grow in other major cities like Los Angeles and New York, had opened a small, temporary outpost in the city.
Clayton Klein, a broker with JLL, is heading a company team, sources say, that is representing Twitter in its search. Klein, reached in his office, declined to comment for this article.
Twitter is the latest in a number of Internet related companies and social media firms to come to the city, which appears to seeing an influx of tenants from the tech and dot-com industry, or growth from those that are already here. In January, the giant Internet software and advertising firm Google, purchased 111 Eighth Avenue for $1.9 billion, what appeared to be a bold move to secure itself a large facility in which to grow.
Late last year, the social networking company Facebook, took two floors at 335 Madison Avenue and options to absorb much of the rest of the building’s office space as well, as much 150,000 square feet or more. Smaller firms involved in the industry have also begun to follow suit, though they have moved more conservatively than during Manhattan’s dot-com boom in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a trend noted in a recent story in The Real Deal.
Among the firms noted in that article, Buddy Media, a firm that handles Facebook and social media marketing, recently relocated its Manhattan office into a roughly 25,000 square foot space at 21 Penn Plaza, a large expansion for the firm. Federated Media, another online marketer, took about 11,000 square feet in 31 West 28th Street, doubling the space it has in the city. Efficient Frontier, a company involved in online marketing, also recently expanded at 18 East 16th Street according to a source.
