• Reuters, Wednesday, May 20, 2009 12 PM

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday reiterated that advertising remains the core revenue source for the 5-year-old social network, which is on track to increase sales by 70% this year. Zuckerberg said Facebook works with more than 70% of the top 100 largest advertisers in the United States, and that the company was seeing fast growth in international markets, where it is creating a direct sales staff.

He added that the company could one day develop a type of advertising network by increasingly making aspects of its service available on other sites. "You can see over time us wanting to offer more ways for people to monetize their site and help out with that, and it could be a pretty natural extension for us to do something with ads or a number of other things that we've considered," Zuckerberg said.

Speaking at Reuters' Global Technology Summit, the 25-year-old Facebook CEO added that his company is in no immediate need of capital and would remain private for a few more years before going public.

On Tuesday, TechCrunch reported that Facebook had turned down a $200 million funding offer, which would have valued the company at $8 billion. Zuckerberg declined to confirm this and other similar reports. "Some of the rumblings that people are reporting on, are just different conversations that have happened, but there's really nothing new to talk about there," Zuckerberg said.

Read the whole story at Reuters »