Facebook Revenue to be "Billions" in 5 Years; Twitter Vital for National Security

Tonight I see Twitter is such a vital communications channel that the state department asked the start-up to postpone maintenance during recent events in Iran.

Facebook is in the same news story but the reason is massive expected revenue growth. Please consider Facebook revenue to be "billions" in 5 years.

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. "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.

Andreessen said it will be difficult, but not impossible, for MySpace to rebound now that Facebook has such a big following. Both he and Horowitz say they do not expect Twitter to make the same kinds of mistakes that MySpace did.

Twitter was a high profile Web start-up even before it shot into the headlines during the Iran election crisis, when the U.S. State Department called on it to reschedule planned maintenance because it considered Twitter a vital communications channel for protesters.

The state department is now probably analyzing hundreds of billions of "tweets" attempting to figure out what tweeters know that the CIA doesn't.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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