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

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

#511

Post by dfox »

chadillac wrote: post #175
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…

The part that confuses me is Facebook has a messaging component... I can use it to message international people without incurring international SMS rates (which is a big reason a lot of people I know use WhatsApp). WhatsApp charges annually for this (already free elsewhere) service. So I'm pretty confused why people would use WhatsApp rather than one of the many (Kik, Hangouts, Facebook, etc.) alternatives available?…

Surprisingly large percentage of FB users use it only/mostly for messaging. WhatsApp is better than FB in that it does only what these users want, works on various lowend phones (e.g. comes preinstalled on Nokia Asha) and works reasonably reliably.

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

#512

Post by tostitos1979 »

dba7dba wrote: post #111
gms wrote: post #61

Earlier 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).

Not true. KakaoTalk is big in S Korea. LINE is big in Japan. Quick check shows of 300 million registered LINE users and 50 million are in Japan.

My wife uses Kakao and she got me on it too. The app works well and it is cute. I thought it was hilarious how they monetize with stickers. Then, I realized ... holy sh*t ... this is worth a billion!

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

#514

Post by anigbrowl »

yen223 wrote: post #494
anigbrowl wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's special about Whatsapp that made them choose this platform rather than (say) email, any other chap app, or even Facebook itself?

Network effects, probably. Given a choice, I'd use something else, but all my friends and contacts are on WhatsApp.

That's my impression too. I can see it's good at what it does, but it looks like a severe case of right place at the right time in an otherwise ordinary messaging app. I wonder if they decided early to focus on language localization and so deliver the most polished-looking product in underserved markets.

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

#515

Post by ForHackernews »

MatthiasP wrote: post #473
ForHackernews wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nationwide SMS is dirt cheap in most of Europe too. But the cost goes up rapidly when you send messages across borders, say from Italy to Germany. And international MMS are just ridiculously expensive. A friend of mine once paid ~5€ for a single MMS sent from Croatia to Germany. Croatian, Slovenian and Austrian telcos all wanted their share of roaming fees. With WhatsApp you don't need to worry about all these things…

Seems like carriers or device manufacturers could easily undercut them by offering the same service, but preinstalled. I guess Apple already does, with iMessage. If only they weren't so blindly stubborn about interoperability.

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

#516

Post by shubhamjain »

nullspace wrote: post #420
ams6110 wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll admit to a distinct feeling, that I've started to lose touch with pop technology. I've never heard of WhatsApp. Though I had most definitely heard of Hotmail in 1998.

It's not really "pop" technology. Surprisingly, it's not used much in the United States, but in India it's basically a replacement for text messaging. Everyone from a 13 year old child to my grand mom uses it to keep in touch with friends and family members across the globe. IMHO, they were able to get to such widespread everyday usage because they such awesome and reliable technology. Much better than what Google ha…

I thought it was the de facto messaging app across the world? Is there any particular reason why it is not used much in US?

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

#517

Post by DerpDerpDerp »

michaelmior wrote: post #461
yapcguy wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CEO just had a higher price than most other people. To get $16bn cash from Facebook is hilarious. Next time a start-up says they won't pay you market rate because of x, y, and z just walk away and laugh. For the sake of a few thousand dollars in wages, you could make them billions. Don't work for cheap bastards. Funny how engineers are supposed to sacrifice yet we never see a lawyer or accountant charge below mar…

I think it's quite rare that any individual employee (probably excluding founders) is responsible for a significant percentage of the value of a company.

I mean, if you assume only 10% of that value is going to employees, then you need only half a percent (0.5%) of that to get a $800k bonus.

If you've only been there 2-3 years, that's a substantial bonus that pushes your pay above market rate.

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

#518

Post by User8712 »

dhoulb wrote: post #196

I just can't get my head around that valuation. For something that's basically a feature, when they already have that functionality baked in, built out to a similar scale? It's not an acquisition for talent, or technology, so what is it? It's an acquisition for investors probably. To argue back against the people who say the kids are leaving FB. Well guess what, we BOUGHT the thing the kids are using. And it's 'mobil…

True, if they're going to toss around this kind of money, they should be buying earlier. I mean, if WhatsApp was worth 50 million a few years ago, they could buy 320 similar companies at that stage, totaling 16B. Basically anyone that gains traction, they could throw a couple hundred million towards and buy them out.

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

#519

Post by anges244 »

loceng wrote: post #457
pitchups wrote: post #131

Earlier 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

Facebook's only job is staying alive. That's the very minimum they can do, and is all they're trying to do.

But they are trying only with tricks and short term solutions just to keep their stock prices high. Acquiring everything isn't a planned strategy for growth but rather a fear of the next facebook strategy, which obviously is not and couldn't be WhatsApp. Instagram maybe but still...
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