Facebook Board Member Andreessen Pegs '09 Revenue At Over $500 Million

Facebook board member and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen tells Reuters that the social network will bring in more than $500 million in revenue this fiscal year.

That’s far more than some had forecast.

eMarketer, for instance, said earlier this year it expected the social network to bring in $230 million in ad revenue (Facebook also makes money via the sale of virtual goods).

While Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has said repeatedly in recent months that the company’s revenue is on track for a 70% jump this year, he hasn’t detailed how much exactly the company is making.

Andreessen also tells the news service that Facebook could post revenue of more than $1 billion this year if “they pushed the throttle forward on monetization.”

His optimism does not stop there. He also says the social network will be bringing in “billions of dollars in revenue” in five years. In a separate interview with Fortune, Andreessen gushes that Facebook “will be bigger than Apple ( AAPL - news - people ).”

The irony is that Andreessen skipped on an opportunity to be an angel investor in Facebook.

“I probably could have if I had tried hard but I didn’t,” he tells Reuters. “You have to actually step forward and actually go after it. And things just really happen fast, and Facebook was happening at a super high rate of speed and things just didn’t click.”

Andreessen has been on the press circuit due to the launch of his new venture firm with ex-Opsware executive Ben Horowitz.