Facebook revenue to hit billions this year
July 9, 2009
By David Lawsky San Francisco
Facebook will likely post billions of dollars in revenue in five years, up from about $500 million (R3.9 billion) this year, according to Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mark Andreessen, who sits on the board of the online social utility.
Andreessen said yesterday that the world's most popular online social network could pile up $1bn in revenue this year if it pushed harder to sell advertising.
But he added that it was more important at this stage for social sites like Facebook and Twitter to retain and grow their user base and capture market share, rather than worry too much about making lots of money right away.
"This calendar year they'll do over $500m,'' Andreessen said, noting that Facebook had more than 225 million users, so revenue per user was still small.
"If they pushed the throttle forward on monetisation, they would be doing more than a billion this year,'' said Andreessen, who made the cover of Time Magazine as the founder of the world's first web browser company, Netscape.
Privately held Facebook, which counts venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Accel Partners, Microsoft and Russian internet investment firm Digital Sky Technologies among its investors, has never disclosed its revenue except to say it expects 70 percent growth this year.
"There's every reason to expect in my view that the thing can be doing billions in revenue five years from now,'' Andreessen said.
Andreessen, who is starting his own venture capital fund with Netscape executive Ben Horowitz, regrets not investing in Facebook.
"I probably could have if I had tried harder, but I didn't,'' he said, recalling that he had known the founders of the social network from the start.
"Generally speaking, people who are selling their stock in Facebook now are making a mistake,'' he said. - Reuters
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