Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook

They have variously been called pointless, a waste of time and a passing fad. But social networking websites could be with us for a long time, according to the man behind Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg, the popular website's 23-year-old founder, suggested yesterday that the true advantages of using social sites might take decades to become fully apparent.
"We're talking about the set of connections that everyone has in real life," he said, speaking at a conference in California.
"All we're trying to do is take those connections and map it out. Once we have an accurate model, we can help people to share their information more effectively. But it's going to take 30 years – or at least tens of years – before this becomes a really mature platform."
The website has become one of the darlings of the latest internet boom, growing rapidly and attracting more than 34 million users worldwide since it launched in 2004 from a dorm room at Harvard University.
He told an audience at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco that a stock market flotation was "years off", but refused to be drawn on whether he was preparing to take substantial investment from the likes of Microsoft or Google.
Last year Mr Zuckerberg reportedly rejected a bid from Yahoo! for around $1bn, but a series of reports in recent weeks have suggested that a number of investors are in negotations to buy a stake in Facebook that would value the company in excess of $10bn.
He suggested that the company was preparing to launch its own advertising platform within the next three months, throwing into doubt its relationship with Microsoft – which has an exclusive deal to provide advertising on the social network.
Asked whether he was happy with the deal, which lasts until 2009, Mr Zuckerberg said that Facebook and Microsoft were "both pretty pleased" with the current situation, but refused to comment on other potential investments.