$40/user - $345m/employee
Truly amazing! If you remember the days when JBoss was acquired by Red Hat, this is the same "value" as one JBoss per Whatsapp employee. Incredible!
Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
211–220 of 831 posts
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#212Can anyone put in numbers what the benefit is for FBK in paying so much for whatsapp? I just don't understand how a messaging company can be "worth" so much, even after extrapolating the expansion in user base. Don't get me wrong - WhatsApp is a great product and very easy to use on top of that (using phone number as id is a great idea to onboard users in a very intuitive way). But I fail to see where this valuation…
Don't look at it as a messaging company. Look upon it as a communication company. Over the last 20 yrs, any company which has make communication with others easier has profited handsomely....eg Skype, mobile-phone operators.
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#213400,000,000 active users [0] 16,000,000,000 USD ---- $40 per user That's an incredible cost. We can assume Facebook is paying for the userbase, the app itself and it's infrastructure would basically run itself. It's less appealing when you realise that there's probably a miniscule fraction of WhatsApp users that don't have a Facebook account. > WhatsApp will remain autonomous and operate independently. You can contin…
Try this: FB market cap ~170B .75B users (EDIT: originally quoted FB 1.2B users, but that is the total count and WhatsApp quotes active users) --> market cap implies roughly $225 per active user. In that light, 40/AU is cheap. Even if you assume 50% overlap, 80/AU is still a deal compared to how the market values FB users
Except Facebook is now generating a serious quarterly profit, which contributes massively to their underlying valuation.
There's no hope of WhatsApp ever justifying this purchase price, not even remotely close. Facebook shareholders just got screwed massively. This deal will be written down in a big way. Zuckerberg threw a dart at the board out of desperation.
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't feel bad; no one really uses them in the US (except us foreigners to communicate with friends and family abroad). They are the de-facto messaging service in the rest of the world (except for China).
im curious, what do americans use instead?
Either regular text messaging or Apple's iMessage (iPhones are most popular in the US). My sense is that they don't really do group chats (a heavily used feature of WhatsApp).
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#215Damn, Zuck is far more paranoid than I thought. He's going to have to come up with a better strategy than buying every company that presents a potential existential threat though. Especially at these prices! I actually think it wasn't such a bad idea to buy Instagram. He paid 1% for something that really could have killed him. But paying $16 billion here is pretty much surrender as far as I'm concerned.
Even if its a rope-a-dope its potentially a smart move. He needs to roll-with-the punches and keep in the lead. Once evaporative cooling kicks in, its not going to be a good ride. So its really best to do whatever is possible to stay ahead...even if that means being the borg of social networking. He has enough of a lead and can accept enough dilution that it remains worth it to continue to layer the next generation of services. A touch passive agressive perhaps, but its perhaps agressive enough to keep the party going another year or two. Which is the time he needs to plot the next move...I mean its unlikely he's going to invent the next FB ;D.
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#216400,000,000 active users [0] 16,000,000,000 USD ---- $40 per user That's an incredible cost. We can assume Facebook is paying for the userbase, the app itself and it's infrastructure would basically run itself. It's less appealing when you realise that there's probably a miniscule fraction of WhatsApp users that don't have a Facebook account. > WhatsApp will remain autonomous and operate independently. You can contin…
> It's less appealing when you realise that there's probably a miniscule fraction of WhatsApp users that don't have a Facebook account.
Remember that while many of those have both WhatsApp and Facebook, they are far more likely to use WhatApp than Facebook. You can ignore facebook but cannot ignore incoming texsts. Still insane.
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only reason I ended up using it is a European friend who wanted to stay in touch. This data is old, but it gives you a rough idea: http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/04/global-messaging-market/mes... 7% penetration in the US, 16% in Canada, 84% in Germany, 97% in Spain.
And like 110% in Argentina.
Seems like WhatsApp has a large user base all over Latin America (no hard data, just what I gather from some comments I have read).
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#218they dont buy the users or the app or the team. What they buy is massive mobile usage. Lately i always thought that Whatsapp was becoming the next facebook as event planning, foto sharing and of course messaging transitioned from fb to whatsapp. Looks like fb thinks the same, they feared whatsapp.
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty amazing that this is precisely what Microsoft paid for Hotmail in 1998 : $400 million for 10 million users = $40 / User. [1] The parallels are striking : Whatsapp is to messaging today what Hotmail was to messaging in the late '90s. [1] http://news.cnet.com/2100-1033-206717.html
Except that people weren't paying to get a Hotmail account. WhatsApp users pay $1/year, so their revenues are around that of Twitter's.
you mean $1 once when they first install it?
the 'pay this amount' was a well known scam message
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't feel bad; no one really uses them in the US (except us foreigners to communicate with friends and family abroad). They are the de-facto messaging service in the rest of the world (except for China).
im curious, what do americans use instead?
As far as I understand the purpose of WhatsApp, Americans use SMS instead. The ones I talk with anyway.
Everyone either has unlimited texting (the price of which isn't considered since they get it with a cell plan that they want for other reasons (probably data)), or keep it under the monthly free limit.