SiliconBeat

(Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, left, talks with John Batelle. Photo by James Duncan Davidson.)

In the afternoon on Thursday at the Web 2.0 Summit, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook took the stage for a grilling by John Battelle of Federated Media. Zuckerberg’s stage personality seems to be evolving, and he appeared to be more focused and confident being in front of the big group. He didn’t make any earth-shattering revelations. But he did have some interesting updates on Facebook’s development. Here are some highlights:

• Battelle asked the Z about the business model thing. Zuckerberg replied: “We’re not focused on optimizing revenue strategy. People have taken that to mean that we’re not focused on revenue. And that’s just wrong.” He noted revenues are in the “hundreds of millions” and growing nicely. Companies are eager to work with Facebook to create branding strategies on its platform and strong. Also, Facebook is opening offices all over the world to take advantage of its growing user base overseas.
• Battelle brought up the big Microsoft investment in Facebook last year: “Do you think Steve Ballmer is happy with the price he paid?” Awkward! But Zuckerberg didn’t flinch. “I think it’s about more than the price he paid. It’s really a partnership. And what we’ve found is that they’ve been a really good partnership for us. People are surprised by that. But they’re in a place where they really want to try new things. And I think we’re both happy with the rate at which we’re both trying new things.”
• Still, Battelle wanted to know if Zuckerberg’s Army was feeling pressure to live up to the $15 billion valuation established by the Microsoft investment. Zuckerberg: Nope. Beyond that: “In terms of going public, we’re not planning to go public for a few years. We don’t feel any type of pressure to live up to that $15 billion. As a private company, we have the luxury of not having to worry about the valuation of our company.”
• Zuckerberg said the company employs 700 people. Battelle was surprised the number wasn’t higher. Zuckerberg said there was no hiring freeze. “We’re continuing to hire really good people. The key emphasis for us is hiring really great technical people.”
• Battelle noted that folks have criticized Facebook for being a “walled garden” that doesn’t want to be part of the open Web and Open Social. Zuckerberg said he expects Facebook will become more open over time. On the other hand, he said developers have told the company they prefer its platform for now.
• On the subject of businesses blocking access to Facebook, Zuckerberg said:”We’ve seen a trend, anecdotally in the other direction.” Some companies are limiting some features, like e-mail and chat. But are finding the platform helpful and even are encouraging employees to sign up and create groups.
• Interesting data point: Zuckerberg said 50 percent of all Facebook users are active every day. “We don’t do anything actively to get people back to the site. We just build interesting tools to let them share more stuff. If we continue to build more tools to make it easier to share more stuff, then next year, people will share twice as much stuff as this year. As long as the stream of information is increasing, and we’re doing our role pushing that forward, then that’s the best strategy for us.”