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Facebook to Buy WhatsApp for 16 Billion

posted by Dopefish on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the when-will-this-darn-bubble-pop-already? dept.

lubricus writes "Facebook announced plans to acquire WhatsApp for four billion cash, plus 12 billion in Facebook shares.

Additionally, WhatsApp employees and founders will receive three billion in restricted stock which will vest in four years. Facebook also agreed to a one billion dollar break up fee.

WhatsApp says they have message volume which approaches the global SMS volume, and hope to have one billion users. Even at those figures, Facebook is paying $16 per user.

I'm guessing WhatsApp will send Snapchat developers a cake."

 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Kelerei on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:15AM

    by Kelerei (1272) on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:15AM (#3281)
    • Telegram [telegram.org] seems to be a decent alternative especially from the privacy point of view.
    • Viber [viber.com] and Voxer [voxer.com] have also come up in discussions I've had, but I'm not sure who their corporate overlords are.
    • Of course, there's good old-fashioned SMS/MMS.

    To be avoided: WeChat (part of Tencent/Naspers), Hangouts (Google), BBM (Blackberry), ChatOn (Samsung), Skype (Microsoft). Say no to their corporate overlords, and yes to privacy and freedom.

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by deif on Thursday February 20 2014, @07:20AM

    by deif (92) on Thursday February 20 2014, @07:20AM (#3349)

    Unfortunately Telegram doesn't have clients for Symbian, Blackberry or Windows Phone, and from what I've heard the have no plans to support those platforms.

    There are still a significant ammount of users of those platforms around (specially in countries outside the US).
    I myself still use a Symbian phone. I can't justify spending money to a new phone when this one still works fine. I even write programs for it with Qt (for personal use).

    Here in Spain many people is increasingly being aware of Telegram, but many end uninstalling it cause they can't communicate with some of their contacts (some even say about 1/3 of their contacts use something else than iOS or Andriod).

    --
    ∀(x, y ∈ A ∪ B; x ≠ y) x² - y² ≥ 0

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by epl on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:26AM

      by epl (1801) on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:26AM (#3378)

      Not to be "that guy", but I'm still going to say it. If you write QT apps for your phone, you could try your hand at writing a client, they do have an API. I can understand them not wanting to write apps for devices that haven't been made for years, but they do offer you the chance to roll something yourself if you are so inclined and someone already has for WP.

      It's obviously going to be your choice if you find it worth your effort or would prefer to find a service that already caters to your existing ecosystem.

      • (Score: 2, Funny) by dotdotdot on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:29AM

        by dotdotdot (858) on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:29AM (#3501)

        Wow! Two mentions of Windows Phone and no mindless, knee-jerk comments bashing it? I'm liking my Soylent more and more everyday.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by tomtomtom on Thursday February 20 2014, @07:32AM

    by tomtomtom (340) on Thursday February 20 2014, @07:32AM (#3357)

    There was an interesting discussion [ycombinator.com] a while back on HN about Telegram. I'm not sure I'd trust it so much. TextSecure [whispersystems.org] seems better, is fully open source (including the server) and e.g. seems to care about issues like "how do I make sure that the TextSecure server doesn't need to know ALL my contacts". No iOS app just yet though.

    • (Score: 1) by omoc on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:56AM

      by omoc (39) on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:56AM (#3396)

      IIRC whispersystems was acquired by twitter? I haven't followed them after that

      • (Score: 1) by song-of-the-pogo on Thursday February 20 2014, @01:57PM

        by song-of-the-pogo (1315) on Thursday February 20 2014, @01:57PM (#3600) Homepage

        Yes, apparently they were acquired by Twitter on Nov. 28, 2011. It would appear that they open-sourced their software not long after their Twitter acquisition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_Systems [wikipedia.org]

        Regarding WhatsApp: I tried it quite some time ago, but never made regular use of it and haven't touched it in a couple of years. Even though I don't use it I am disappointed about the Facebook purchase. I'm tired of seeing service after service get absorbed, amoeba-fashion, by large players like Facebook, Google and Twitter. Furthermore, as I have no interest in ever joining Facebook and, in fact, would like to stay as far away from it as I reasonably can, I'm a little worried about my old, dangling WhatsApp account and am wondering what Facebook will glean from it. I suppose I should've made a more conscientious effort to clean up after myself.

        --
        "We have met the enemy and he is us."

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by jaap.h on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:28PM

    by jaap.h (1773) on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:28PM (#3554)

    If you are considering using telegram (I've never used it myself), you should be aware that there are some potential issues:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6913456 [ycombinator.com] and
    http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/telegram-crypto-c hallenge/ [thoughtcrime.org]