Hurricane Sandy takes out two NYC Facebook events

Google has also cancelled an event for Monday, and the NYSE has ceased all trading

(Updated to reflect comment from Facebook)

In case you had not heard, there is a giant storm that is set to take out the entire east coast of the United States in the next day or so. People are being evacuated, and told not to go outside unless they absolutely have to. And, even then, it’s probably a good idea to stay inside.

Not too surprisingly, a number of tech events in New York City that were planned for this week have been canceled, as has all trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The latest to be cancelled are two Facebook events, the social network confirmed to VatorNews Monday. The cancelledations were first reported by AllThingsD.

There is no rescheduled date at this time.

The social network was set to hold an engineering open house in mid-town Manhattan on Tuesday, and a larger Gifts event at FAO Schwartz on Thursday.

Facebook announced that it was going to be relaunching gifts in September, and was set to unveil new retail partnerships at the upcoming event.

The way Facebook gifts works is that a user decides to buy someone else a gift, so they will go that person’s timeline and click the Gift button at the top. They select a card, add a personal message and then send the gift. The recipient will be notified, and asked for their address. The gift can be paid for immediately, or the sender can choose to wait until the recipient enters their info.

The sender will never see the address of the person he or she is sending the gift to and the person receiving the gift won’t see the price. They can also change the size, color and style of the gift. 

Facebook is offering hundreds of gifts, including cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery, a stuffed animal from Gund, a digital gift card from Starbucks, cookies, household goods, tshirts and posters.

The service is being rolled out gradually, first to Facebook users in the United States.

The Facebook events are far from the only things that are being affected by the storm.

Google was set to rollout new Android products at an event in Manhattan on Monday as well, but the company announced on Saturday that it was cancelled that event as well.

The entire New York City Stock Exchange has been shut down as well, the first time in 27 years that the NYSE has been closed due to weather, according to Forbes. The last time was due to Hurricane Gloria in 1986.

Since then, the NYSE has developed electronic trading to keep brokers’ orders flowing, called NYSE Arca. The NYSE had considered shifting trading to Arca, since it is not based in New York City, but instead decided to shut trading down altogether.

(Image source: https://www.baynews9.com)