11–20 of 831 posts
That being said, I use WhatsApp every day to chat with my friends around the world and it's really excellent. I know it's used a lot in other parts of the world even more, so I doubt this purchase is focused on US markets. It seems that every one of my Arab friends uses WhatsApp to talk to their families back home (and they use it at home, too). I don't know about other regions.
Such a waste. Most Whatsapp users already use Facebook in parallel. Facebook will never see a ROI on this acquisition. Not even close.
Welp. There's another app that I won't be accepting any updates for from now on...
WhatsApp raised only $8 million (from Sequoia in 2011 http://www.crunchbase.com/company/whatsapp).
19B sale price is about 10% of Facebook's 173B valuation.
At 400 million, WhatsApp has more users than, the world's third most populous country, the United States has residents.
I know Whatsapp is a big deal -- when I was in HKG a few weeks back every advertisement was Phone Number and Whatsapp number (We're talking on-bench advertising) and on TV as well. Still, crazy.