Would-be Facebook investors will have to wait a while before the company has a ticker symbol like GOOG, MSFT, and YHOO.  Peter Thiel (re)confirmed this afternoon that Facebook won't go public until 2012 at the earliest.

Bloomberg reported the same thing in July, meaning this isn't exactly breaking news, but there is a difference between three anonymous sources and Thiel.  Thiel's about as close to Facebook as anyone other than Mark Zuckerberg can get.

The evidence: once upon a time, Thiel invested $500,000 in Facebook.  In return, he got 10.2 percent of the company.  Also, Thiel sits on Facebook's board of directors, meaning he's aware of the company's goings-on, and not just sitting back, waiting to profit.

So again, it's important that Thiel told Fox Business, "[Facebook] will not IPO for awhile.  I think we will follow the example of Google which is you do not go public until very, very late in the process.  This is a by-product of Sarbanes-Oxley.  At least two years.  I think the company is on record saying it will not go public until 2012 at the earliest."

It should be very interesting to see what Facebook's user count and revenue figures look like at that point in time.

Anyway, a hat tip goes to Roger Nachman.