VentureBeat

Facebook, the social-networking Web site courted by Yahoo, isn’t for sale, board member Peter Thiel tells Bloomberg.

“It’s going to remain an independent company,” Thiel said in an interview last week. “The plan is to actually build it, maybe at some point take it public, but definitely not to sell it.”

Thiel said the site is actually worth $8 billion or more, citing the site’s college-aged users, according to Bloomberg. He said the company is focused finding the best way to make money from its millions of members. VentureBeat also talked last week with Thiel and and his partner Sean Parker, who helped build Facebook, and we’re not surprised to here this. Parker is convinced that Facebook’s mode of letting its users communicate, and its social graph, is the way of the future (we wrote about his views here), so they may think Facebook is undervalued by Yahoo.

However, Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, doesn’t appear as assertive as Thiel:

“We are not necessarily focused on what the exit is going to be — whether it’s selling the company or an IPO or when that’s going to be,” Zuckerberg said in an interview. “But we obviously think that there’s a lot of potential to keep growing.”

Next Story: Jajah brings free calls to Germany and Austria
Previous Story: The “FF class” of stock, for founders who want cash early

Tags: inv:Founders-Fund, people:Mark-Zuckerberg, people:Peter-Thiel