Facebook Will Hit $2 Billion 2010 Revenue, Says Mob Of Unofficial Facebook Spokespersons

I’m done digging on this story and I’m just going to come out and say it. Facebook revenue estimates have been all over the place for 2010 – from less than a billion ranging up to nearly $2 billion. eMarketer recently estimated $1.28 billion, for example.

I haven’t poked around on the Facebook CFO’s laptop for a while now (those were the days!), so I don’t have anything better to report. Except this – fairly senior Facebook employees are telling their friends that the company will hit and just exceed $2 billion in revenue this year. Part of this is just talking to friends. And part of it is recruiting.

Right or wrong, it’s a consistent message over the last several weeks that has come from half a dozen or more second hand sources. And it’s always the same message – “my friend at Facebook just told me they were going to have more than $2 billion in 2010 revenue.”

As a point of comparison, Google first crossed the $1 billion in revenue threshold in 2004, the year they went public. By 2006 they had $10 billion in revenue, and they crossed $20 billion in 2008.