Facebook, the rapidly growing social networking site, today laid to rest speculation that it would was planning to go public any time soon, saying that such a development, were it to happen, was "years off".

Mark Zuckerberg, the company's chief executive, surprised some observers by saying that it has "almost wrapped up" its financing - suggesting that its revenues may finally be starting to grow.

Speaking at an internet conference in San Francisco, Mr Zuckerberg outlined a 30-year vision for the company, saying that it might be "tens of years" before Facebook becomes "a mature platform".

Asked whether the mooted valuation of $15 billion (£7.4 billion) for the site was excessive, Mr Zucerkberg said: "We'll see."

Facebook: The beginner’s guide

Forced to sign up by repeated friend requests? Hit the virtual ground running with our virtual guide

Multimedia

• Facebook section - full coverage

BACKGROUND

• Careless Facebook users ‘open to identity theft’

• Ten essential Facebook accessories

• Parents are turning into online spies

• Networkers who click with 1,000 ‘friends’

Let your employees use Facebook — it's less risky than you think

Businesses should not allow legal risks to detract from the opportunities of web 2.0, says Mark Watts

Related Links

• Facebook boosts child protection

• Technology giants spark innovation free-for-all

Wearing a sweater, jeans and flip flops, Mr Zuckerberg told the audience at Web 2.0 Summit that the "ramp up" in the activity on the site over the year had been incredible and that he had been humbled by the attention from people now seeking to work with it.

He said that Facebook was breaking even despite concentrating on product development rather than "optimising revenues".

Mr Zuckerberg said he expected the company to double in size over the next year - growing from 300 to 700 employees - but added that there were no plans to bring in a specialist to help guide its growth, as Google did when its founders hired Eric Schmidt to be chief executive.

Asked to outline his vision for the site, Mr Zuckerberg said he hoped that it could continue to map the "set of connections - friends and acquiantances - that people have," a network that he described as the world's "social graph".

"The social graph isn't something we built," he said. "It's something that exists in the world. Once we have an accurate model of the graph, then we can expose those people to a set of applications which will enable them to share their information more effectively."

Six months ago, Facebook, which has more than 52 million users, according to comScore, opened its platform to external developers, letting them build tools such as the 'aquarium' feature, which lets members send 'virtual fish' to one another.

Asked whether the site plans to follow MySpace into syndication deals with larger media companies, Mr Zuckerberg said: "We're not really a media company. To the extent that someone wants to build an application based on a specific type of media, that's not really something we'd want to go after.

"The types of problems we're trying to solve are deeply technical. That's what we want to build towards."