Facebook revenue to be "billions" in 5 years: board member

By David Lawsky

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook will likely be posting billions of dollars in revenue in five years, up from about $500 million this year, according to Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mark Andreessen who sits on Facebook's board.

Andreessen told Reuters that the world's most popular online social network could pile up $1 billion in revenue this year if it pushed harder on selling 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 $500 million," Andreessen said in an interview, noting that Facebook has more than 225 million users, so revenue per user is still small.

"If they pushed the throttle forward on monetization they would be doing more than a billion this year," said Andreessen, who made the cover of Time Magazine as founder of the world's first Web browser company, Netscape.

Privately held Facebook -- which counts venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Accel Partners, Microsoft Corp 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 hard but I didn't," he said, recalling that he has known the founders of Facebook from the beginning.