At the Web 2.0 Summit, the 23-year-old CEO of Facebook admitted some intriguing revelations about the social network giant: its workforce will double, Facebook will pursue more online ads and its developer platform will be even more mature in the future.
Digital Journal — The face of Facebook went casual for his big interview at San Francisco’s Web 2.0 Summit yesterday: Mark Zuckerberg wore a T-shirt and sandals for his conversation with John Battelle, the Summit’s organizer. Answering questions as casually as he looked, Zuckerberg offered the packed audience insight into the monumental growth of the social networking site, dropping some tasty quotes for the blogosphere to debate upon for months.
First, Zuckerberg faced incessant questioning about online advertising. Asked whether Facebook will position its platform for revenue growth (it currently doesn’t turn a profit), Zuckerberg simply answered, “We might do something in ads.” Battelle continued the line of questioning, wondering if Facebook would venture outside the Facebook domain to include ads much like Google does with AdSense. Zuckerberg was evasive, saying the company is just getting started in this area and the public will have to wait three months for an announcement on this topic.
Zuckerberg also mentioned how Facebook will double its workforce in the coming year, adding 400 more employees to handle the 47 million active users on the site. Zuckerberg, 23, told the audience:
We have thought about developing a good team rather than hiring a CEO with experience in this space, and I’m not convinced that exists. Instead we are focused on building a strong team.
Also, the Facebook CEO discussed the popularity of the open platform to allow developers to create third-party applications for the site. Zuckerberg said the site has attracted 100,000 developers, but hinted that this openness is just the tip of the iceberg. He said:
We’re going to be working on this for years, and it’s going to be tens of years before this matures.
For more information on what other Internet superstars will reveal about their sites, check out the Web 2.0 Summit website at web2summit.com
