Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 831 posts

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

#221

Post by my_username_is_ »

primitivesuave wrote: post #103

My uncle in India runs a construction company, and literally every single aspect of company communication is done over WhatsApp. Each construction site has to constantly post pictures on WhatsApp, and basically all management and payroll decisions are made through WhatsApp discussions. Apparently this is not an uncommon practice, as businesses that were once administered by pen and paper are now using WhatsApp to imp…

That's amazing. It can be easy to write off WhatsApp with an ethnocentric view, but to hear how other people are using it on the other side of the world certainly adds a new perspective

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

#222

Post by dba7dba »

amirmc wrote: post #199
sveme wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others said before, it's most likely a defensive move, against other interested parties but also against Whatsapp itself. I don't use and thoroughly dislike Facebook but I'm using Whatsapp groups daily with my closest friends and my climbing mates. In that sense Whatsapp has started to move beyond SMS and towards the social network market. With such a large user base and their established mobile presence it would…

> "... it will stay the same and will not develop those features that could have threatened Facebook in the long term." That's fascinating and completely believable. The question will be can FB move those people to their own platform in the future and quietly retire Whatsapp in the future. It's interesting that the CEO of Whatsapp is joining the FB board since that will affect the direction both products take.

CEO of Whatsapp prided on not listening in private conversation or collecting personal data, which Facebook ACTIVELY does.

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

#223

Post by frandroid »

flyinglizard wrote: post #176
josh2600 wrote: post #104

For everyone saying this is a waste of money, consider the commentary around Instagram at $1B. Basically the world said that this was a horrible acquisition at the time, but in retrospect, buying Instagram was quite cheap. Buying your closest competitor for less than 15% of your market cap is usually a good idea. Fast forward to today. What'sapp is the dominant messaging application across the world. Carriers hate it…

Your argument makes perfect sense when you're talking about real companies, with R&D, marketing, technology and all that. GM buying Tesla for 15% of its worth might make sense. But in the social space, companies are entirely seasonal, the barriers to entry are none, there's no way to predict user traction or behavior. I understand this is how Facebook intends to keep itself at the top of the social heap, but with rec…

Facebook and Twitter are seasonal?

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

#224

Post by ForHackernews »

philp wrote: post #182
notahacker wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Destroy? There will be a host of new messaging startups created off the back of this, and suddenly the Snapchat valuation looks sane. Do one thing that Facebook does but better is the new gold rush. Sure, most of them will fail hard without raising a cent in revenue, but others will start to threaten to chip away at Facebook's market share.. Anecdata: I get a lot more messages on FB messenger than WhatsApp...

Whatsapp has virtually no market share in the US. In basically all markets outside of the US, however, they are dominating the messaging space. Text messages in major EU countries like Germany and France have been almost completely supplanted by WhatsApp.

Is that because SMS costs a fortune in Europe? As an American with unlimited SMS/MMS, I don't see the point of WhatsApp at all.

I guess maybe if I wanted to send a text to somebody in Europe.

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

#225

Post by the_economist »

foobarqux wrote: post #200
tomblomfield wrote: post #81

Sequoia just landed a 5x return on their fund with this one deal. At a rough guess, they put in $8m for 15% of the company in 2011, valuing it at around $53m. A $16B sale is a 300x increase in value, so Sequoia's stake is worth $2.4bn. Their standard fund size is around $500m. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/16/us-sequoia-funds-i...

Would investment necessarily be limited to one fund?

A single 8mm investment almost definitely would be.

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

#226

Post by stusmall »

pitchups wrote: post #131
nwh wrote: post #60

400,000,000 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…

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

Not taking inflation into account. 400 million for 9 million users adjusted for inflation is a bit over $60/user

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

#227

Post by danabramov »

berzniz wrote: post #197
patrickaljord wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they ruin it? They didn't ruin instagram. I'm not a fan of facebook but I don't agree here.

It just can't be the same under Facebook. It's a matter of time until my whatsapp entity and my Facebook entity (I don't have one today) will merge. Same thing as Google tries to do with Youtube users. It just doesn't make sense to have two types of users in your system.

Did this happen to Instagram?

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

#229

Post by orbifold »

kayoone wrote: post #145
josh2600 wrote: post #104

For everyone saying this is a waste of money, consider the commentary around Instagram at $1B. Basically the world said that this was a horrible acquisition at the time, but in retrospect, buying Instagram was quite cheap. Buying your closest competitor for less than 15% of your market cap is usually a good idea. Fast forward to today. What'sapp is the dominant messaging application across the world. Carriers hate it…

why ? viber and whatsapp are still there and will be in the future, i dont see new room for a messaging app.

Some years ago the dominant messaging apps were icq and aol messenger and msn messenger. I think almost every new generation just uses their own messenger.
Post reply on HN