Marc Andreessen: Facebook revenue to top US$500M in 2009

Facebook board member Marc Andreessen, who just launched a new venture fund, said in an interview with Reuters (published Monday) that he expects the company's revenue to be in excess of US$500 million in 2009, and that in five years it'll be well into the billions.

"Generally speaking, people who are selling their stock in Facebook now are making a mistake," he told Reuters regarding the fact that since an initial public offering is still a ways off, Facebook is permitting some employee stock sales to Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian firm that invested US$200 million in the site in May.

Andreessen himself is not a personal investor in Facebook, and said that "I probably could have if I had tried hard but I didn't."

If Facebook worked the ad-sales front a bit harder, Andreessen added in the interview, revenue could already be over a billion.

But Facebook has never taken kindly to traditional display advertisements, choosing instead to experiment with "engagement ads" integrated into the social-networking experience--a product it may potentially extend into Facebook Connect's participating sites, which now number over 10,000.

Additionally, Facebook has been working toward an alternative revenue stream with its "credits" system, a virtual currency that for now is restricted to the company's in-house "Gifts" application. Sometime in the not-so-distant future, the Facebook currency system will be made available to developers using the social network's API, which could produce a significant new source of revenue for Facebook as it takes a cut of transactions.

Andreessen--the Netscape founder and Silicon Valley mainstay whose current projects include social-network builder Ning--has been on Facebook's board for just over a year. He joined at the personal request of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said at the time that "Marc is an industry leader, and we're fortunate to have him join our board."

This article was first published as a blog post on CNET News.