Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs

Re:Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus ... by mathattack on Wednesday February 19, 2014 @05:27PM (#7266834)

I don't think they're buying it per current user. It's either about paying for future users (granted, triple the user base and it's still a lot) or a game of defense against a potential competitor.

They bought the photo company at what seemed an outrageous amount in part to co-opt a competitor. In the end it was profitable. They alter their feed to look more Twitter-like, encouraging people to avoid the competitor. I see this as defense too. It isn't about new users, it's about corporate competition.

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Re:Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus ... by Nicholas_C on Wednesday February 19, 2014 @05:32PM (#7266899)

>They bought the photo company at what seemed an outrageous amount in part to co-opt a competitor. In the end it was profitable.

Are you talking about Instagram? Unless I've been living under a rock I haven't heard or read anything that says they're profitable.

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Re:Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus ... by mathattack on Thursday February 20, 2014 @06:49AM (#7270285)

Instagram. Since the purchase, photos are much more prevalent in the main Facebook offering, and there isn't anyone else building a photo site to compete.

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Re:Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus ... by ulfw on Wednesday February 19, 2014 @06:33PM (#7267446)

Plus they didn't even cost 1 Billion. Chump change.

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Re:Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus ... by nwh on Wednesday February 19, 2014 @05:30PM (#7266874)

> triple the user base and it's still a lot

WhatsApp current has 430M monthly active users[0], compared with FaceBook's 1.2B[1] monthly active users. Tripling their userbase would make them the same size FaceBook is itself.

ED: Corrected as child comments pointed out.

[0]: http://blog.whatsapp.com/index.php/2013/12/400-million-stori... [1]: http://investor.fb.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=821954

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Re:Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus ... by ggreenbe on Wednesday February 19, 2014 @05:33PM (#7266908)

To be honest, why not? I can see WhatsApp having more active users than Facebook in the future considering their current growth %.

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Re:Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus ... by mathattack on Thursday February 20, 2014 @01:31PM (#7272640)

Seems reasonable since they do well on low tech phones. Facebook is limited by the amount of internet connections and smartphones.

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Re:Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus ... by underwater on Wednesday February 19, 2014 @06:53PM (#7267569)

Facebook has 1.23B monthly actives and 750M daily actives. Your WhatsApp link is using MAU as a metric.

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