The giant social network Facebook—which has over 400 million regular users world wide—is planning on opening a satellite office in Seattle as early as July. This would be Facebook's first engineering office outside of the Bay Area. The company is scouting for locations around town right now, and rumors say it's hoping to find something in Pioneer Square or Capitol Hill, though the Eastside can't be ruled out yet.

Quoted in a statement from Mayor McGinn today, Facebook's Mike Schroepfer said, "Seattle has distinguished itself as a city with an extremely deep technical talent pool as well as a high quality of life, which makes it the ideal place for an engineering office."

This is the second sign in the last week that Seattle might be shedding it's "minor leagues of tech" image. Mike Arrington, editor of mega-blog TechCrunch, dropped a bomb on Monday when he announced that he was buying a house here, and touting the merits of Seattle's start ups.

I'm guessing there are a few hundred unemployed software engineers polishing up their resumes today.