Dev.SN

Facebook to Buy WhatsApp for 16 Billion

posted by Dopefish on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:00AM   
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."

• Re:Bubble (Score: 2, Informative) by aitmanga on Thursday February 20 2014, @10:19AM

  by aitmanga (558) on Thursday February 20 2014, @10:19AM (#3443)

  1. Whatsapp is not popular in USA but in less developed places like India and Africa. This might make you think that rest of the world is illiterate and stupid, but it is not so. You see, SMS is pretty expensive in most of the world and people are charged per SMS everywhere. So a communication between two people can very easily finish all your balance.

  As someone who lives in Mexico I can certainly attest to this. Data from some social media apps (like Twitter, Whatsapp, or Facebook) is free and since SMS cost ~1MXN you can cleary see that it's in the best interest of people to use the cheaper alternative.

  --
  Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

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