Facebook Buying Messaging App WhatsApp for $16 Billion

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In a capitalist society, finance and the stock market are meant to efficiently allocate capital to it most productive uses. I have to ask: is it working?
 
Deactivated FB this past weekend and now I can delete this account, iMessage and Wickr are good enough for me.
 
Good lord that's a lot of money.

I never even heard of this app before.

Crazy that Lucas sold Lucasfilm to
Disney for 4billion and that's just chump change compared to this.

16 billion???? There is something shady going on.
 
yano729 said:
Well give some company credit for going out there and taking a risk and putting forth a large chunk of money to purchase a big company, unlike some other companies *cough cough* (apple). Apple needs to step their game and purchase a big company like Twitter. I can even imagine what Twitter is valued at if whatsapp if 16 billion dollars.
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Apple is not in the business of buying fads. Facebook, like myspace before it, will go the wayside once something else better/different comes along. Whatsapp, like AIM before it, will also go the wayside.
 
bigchrisfgb said:
In my opinion all Apple have to do is make iMessage cross plat form (though include a subscription charge for non iDevices, maybe extend it's offering to PC's), add multiple chat support and they could win the race for messaging.
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with the success of quicktime and safari on windows apple is certain of winning this particular race

however hopefully they will have fixed messages from ballooning up on the devices before they invite users on other platforms to that mess.
 
WhatsApp has 500 million users. Let's say 50% of those users pay $1 (alot of people got it for free). That's $250 million per year in revenue. $16 billion / $250 million = 64 years.

So in 64 years Whatsapp will break even assuming Whatsapp can keep it's $500 million users. Tech never lasts very long so it's likely whatsapp doesn't have an user base in 64 years. (just look at MSN / hotmail which was the biggest messaging client a few years ago). What are those M&A analysts smoking :confused:

Congratulations to all the people at Whatsapp. They got probably the best deal in the history of acquisitions? $500 million per employee.
 
dannys1 said:
facebook messenger, skype, messageme, kik, bbm, imessage, sms, email, twitter, viber, line, wechat, tango messenger, voovoo, google hangouts, textme, imo, xms, groupme, path, kakoa talk, cubie, hike, maaii, rounds, snapchat, nimbuzz, chaton, voxer, yahoo messenger, text 2 group, instamessage, im+, molto, hipchat, didi, imessenger, textie, yak messenger, wazapp, upptalk, igotchat, palringo messenger, coco, telegram messenger, bobsled messaging, chat for omegle, libon, truphone...

There are 49 alternatives for you.
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+ icq :d
 
For those asking why iMessage isn't good enough: it isn't cross platform and I want "revert to SMS" turned on for if I message UK people - I can't allow this to international people because international texts are not covered in my "unlimited texts" phone tariff and there is no individual settings to override this.
 
Chaos123x said:
Good lord that's a lot of money.

I never even heard of this app before.

Crazy that Lucas sold Lucasfilm to
Disney for 4billion and that's just chump change compared to this.

16 billion???? There is something shady going on.
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I have 1900 or so contacts on my phone and out of that 500 or so use whatsapp. If you don't know what whatsapp is or not even heard of it before tbh you have been living under a rock in a medieval cave . :)
 
Chaos123x said:
Good lord that's a lot of money.

I never even heard of this app before.

Crazy that Lucas sold Lucasfilm to
Disney for 4billion and that's just chump change compared to this.

16 billion???? There is something shady going on.
Click to expand...

Facebook bought it for the data. Facebook is going to ad whatsapp to the extreme because Facebook can't earn $16 billion with Whatsapp. The only possibility of earning back the $16 billion is threw advertisement.

Look at youtube now, it's full of ads while it was free of ads before Google bought it.
 
UBS28 said:
WhatsApp has 500 million users. Let's say 50% of those users pay $1 (alot of people got it for free). That's $250 million per year in revenue. $16 billion / $250 million = 64 years.

So in 64 years Whatsapp will break even assuming Whatsapp can keep it's $500 million users. Tech never lasts very long so it's likely whatsapp doesn't have an user base in 64 years. (just look at MSN / hotmail which was the biggest messaging client a few years ago). What are those M&A analysts smoking :confused:

Congratulations to all the people at Whatsapp. They got probably the best deal in the history of acquisitions? $500 million per employee.
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all the users, their data and those texts are worth much more ;) that's what FB has paid for
 
Abs_p said:
I have 1900 or so contacts on my phone and out of that 500 or so use whatsapp. If you don't know what whatsapp is or not even heard of it before tbh you have been living under a rock in a medieval cave . :)
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So the majority of your contacts live in a cave??
 
dannys1 said:
Ha ridiculous.

Whatsapp is the most popular messaging app though, but, like most things that are "most popular" its not the best or prettiest. Messageme is a lot nicer but barely used, even Kik is a bit better. Whatsapp are always about 4 months before everyone else with big iOS or iPhone changes too.
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Whatsapp is superior, you just can't see it.
 
Everyone listen up...

If any of you actually believe SMS is a viable alternative to a Whatsapp type service, you need to be seriously slapped in the face. Have you ever tried to SMS someone in another country from the US? Good luck on that one. I think someone calculated that if you convert SMS to price per gigabyte its something like $400,000 per 1 GB. If you think that's a sane solution, you need a course in math.

iMessage - iWish. I love me some iMessage, but the closed system makes it near useless. No group chat - makes it worse. So no, not a viable whatsapp type chat system replacement.

The winner - whatsapp. Unfortunately Facebook buying them means the first nail in their coffin. Anything Facebook touches turns to crap. I refuse to use facebook and deleted my account in December. They are pure evil.

I expect a Whatsapp competitor to rise out of these ashes, but it will take a long time to make the switch. I hope its Google Hangouts, but, sadly, I see little acceptance of it lately.
 
aajeevlin said:
What do you use? For international and cross platform messaging? Please don't say iMessage, because not everybody on this world as an iDevice. Don't get me wrong, I love iMessage, but only if Apple would open it up for cross platform, which I don't think they will.

On the other note, its funny because I just found out about this app called Telegram yesterday. Looks promising and they have desktop version as well. If the deal goes through it might be time to switch. I don't need Facebook to sniff through my messages...
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No one I know uses WhatsApp, so I just, y'know. Text or Skype. I don't feel like asking everyone to join WhatsApp for no real reason.
 
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