We’ll leave it to you whether or not Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, deserves the label "visionary."  But in a recent interview, 25-year-old Zuckerberg revealed that he is indeed considering what’ll happen a long ways down the road.

For starters, Zuckerberg was able to give a reasonably thought-out answer when Dan Lyons asked him where Facebook will be in five years.  He talked about focusing on Facebook Platform to "make other sites more social."  While also having "hundreds of millions of [more] people using Facebook," of course.

Then, the really interesting thing is what Zuckerberg let slip when asked about funding.  "Back in the early days I had the chance during one of our funding rounds to get a bit of liquidity," he said.  "It meant that in making decisions about Facebook I didn’t have to worry about the short term.  I could just work on making Facebook as good as possible, and optimize it for 10 to 20 years out."

Zuckerberg later continued, "I think this is a long-term thing.  There is still a lot of growth.  In all these dimensions – users, advertisers – the peak is not for a long time."

So Facebook’s CEO seems to have a good idea of where he wants the company to be two decades from now.  Fans and investors who worry about it going the way of Friendster should find that extremely reassuring.