Want Facebook? Cut a check for $10-billion

It’s not from the horse’s mouth — i.e., not from founder Mark Zuckerberg — but it’s close enough: Facebook financial backer Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, told The Deal that the social network isn’t planning an IPO anytime soon, and that if someone wanted to make an offer it should be in the $10-billion range. He said the earliest the site might go public would be 2009 — “and hopefully not until significantly after that.”

Meanwhile, Zuckerberg is expected to appear in court in Boston in connection with the lawsuit from ConnectU, which claims that he stole the idea for Facebook along with much of the source code. The legalities of the case remain to be proven (Zuckerberg was apparently asked to help do some work for ConnectU but was not paid and only spent six hours working on the site). As far as the idea goes, an article from 2004 in the Harvard Crimson notes that neither site was terribly original.