Facebook Hiring Up For More, Potentially Larger Acquisitions

Facebook‘s biggest advertisers are increasingly spending more on the site, while ad prices have held their ground, which means its revenue may rise to $1.4 billion or more in 2010. That’s one major take-away from this Bloomberg article, based on an interview with chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.

More interestingly, in my humble opinion, Facebook reportedly plans to make more and potentially bigger acquisitions in the near future, and is in the midst of recruiting another dealmaker to get them closed.

Vaughan Smith, the company’s director of corporate development (whose previous jobs involved dealmaking for the likes of eBay and Move Networks), told Bloomberg’s Brian Womack:

“As we get bigger and our platform gets more stable, I fully expect that we will be doing more significant acquisitions. This is working for us, and it’s working for the people that we’re acquiring.”

He also said Facebook tends to purchase small-sized startups, typically with a dozen or fewer employees, to bring in entrepreneurs at heart who can grow into future leaders within the company. This rings true; Facebook’s recently appointed CTO is Bret Taylor, who joined Facebook thanks to its $50 million acquisition of FriendFeed a year ago.

Smith also told Bloomberg the company intends to keep up its acquisition pace (it recently coughed up $10 million for the purchase of Hot Potato and moved to acquire travel recommendation service Nextstop and, earlier, Octazen, ShareGrove and Divvyshot – this year alone.)

Smith said he plans to hire another corporate development executive, adding to the one person helping him secure deals presently.

The team will be mostly looking at companies focused on virtual currencies and mobile social networking, and startups that can help ramp up advertising revenues from its 500+ million users on its way to an eventual initial public offering.

And to bring more guns to the upcoming war with Google, of course.