Facebook starts first servers outside US

Facebook says it has started processing data through its first server farm outside the United States, on the edge of the Arctic Circle in Sweden.

The company inaugurated servers in its new, 300,000-square foot (28,000-square meter) facility outside the city Lulea, saying it should improve the social network's performance in Europe. 

Facebook director of site operations Tom Furlong said the servers will serve a large chunk of Facebook's European users. 

Facebook is one of nine major US internet providers whose customers' usage is swept up every day by an NSA counterterror surveillance program. The secret court order that authorizes the program, named PRISM, only allows it to examine foreigners' internet usage overseas. 

Furlong said the data stored in Sweden is replicated in other locations in the US.