More than a tweet, less than a blog.

So Facebook is apparently on track to do $1B in revenues in 2010, a growth of 60%, and earlier they’re said to be cashflow positive. I guess one could argue that it’s astounding that it’s not better, considering their massive user base. Maybe Bo Peabody is right, after all.

By comparison, Google managed to maintain triple digit growth rates, for both top and bottom line, well into the billions of yearly revenues. Even more interesting, Google required “only” $25M in venture funding, turning a solid profit on less than $100M in revenues. For some reason, a lot of software/Internet companies that have gone public has required funding in that range, rather than hundreds of millions of dollars.

Facebook actually looks a lot more like Yahoo - massive engagement, and good but not great monetization. Hrm… I wonder what their drivers for revenue and improved monetization will be?

Probably not users, first of all they’re saturating the short term market and second because they’re already top dog in most markets worth monetizing. And getting more time spent from each user probably won’t cut it either, considering that time spent went up by 700% from 2008 to 2009, and they’re already the Internet’s number one time waster by a comfortable margin.

So it seems that a new monetization scheme is in order. I’ve always been a big fan of them creating a micro payment platform or possibly becoming a bank of sorts, leveraging the trust dimension of their assets. Creating an ad network, much like AdSense, by leveraging Facebook Connect would also be an interesting move. As would preparing a decent marketing research packaging.

Maybe they’re hoping to do like Google and let someone else invent it for them?

What do you think?