Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs • Hacker News Board

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

#681

Post by shin_lao » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 8:38 AM UTC

Mark Zuckerberg is most certainly very intelligent and I'm pretty certain his board is highly capable.

If they are ready to pay $ 16B for WhatsApp it means that it's worth, for them, $ 16B.

For me the take away is that Facebook struggles to grow in "underdeveloped" countries and will pay whatever it takes to make sure these zones are easy to conquer.

Those markets are the growth of tomorrow and Facebook is certainly plateauing at home.

In the long run, I think Facebook will become some sort of shell company for "anything social".

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

#682

Post by antirez » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 8:39 AM UTC

If you have teenager offsprings like me (I've a 13 years old son) you can understand that better maybe. I heard the sentence "We don't need Facebook since there is Whatsapp" an endless number of times from him and his friends. From my point of view at first this didn't made a lot of sense, I considered Whatsapp a no-cost SMS replacement. The reality is that Groups are a killer feature: my son's school class has a group where they share what are the homework for tomorrow, or just send messages that are much alike what you would write on Facebook as status messages. Then I realized that I also created a group for my friends, like, in one group there is me, my wife, and one couple of friends of us where we plan what to do together. In another group there is our family where we share pictures of my daughter. We are using Whatsapp like Facebook as well... Under this point of view this move makes a lot more sense, I believe Whatsapp is eating Facebook traffic.

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

#683

Post by sentenza » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 8:41 AM UTC

myzerox wrote: post #489

sentenza wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the network effects are still there if you have an interoperable standard. You can use _any_ app that supports the standard and still connect to everybody in the social network. There is no reason why the social network of mankind should remain captured in the userbase of a single messaging app. And it is the abstract social network that does provide the network effects.

I didn't get which inbox messages would hit, in your scenario. Would I be required to install a new app for checking an additional inbox?

There are some technical quirks if it is supposed to be a decentralized system but still tied to your telephone number as account identification/address. You'd obviously want to be as independent as possible from your service provider, especially here in Europe, where it is possible to take the phone number with you when changing providers.

It'd probably have to be a system where the server must verify that the number actually belongs to you by sending you a "traditional" SMS with an access code. You'd also need a trust network among the servers or else there would be servers announcing every telephone number out there as theirs.

Regarding the app, I guess any app that supports the protocol would do, even ones that also do other things. This should produce a healty app ecosystem.

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

#684

Post by yoodenvranx » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 8:43 AM UTC

Can somebody explain me who gets this money and how it is distributed to the owners?

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

#685

Post by 0x45696e6172 » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 8:45 AM UTC

JimDabell wrote: post #665

superuser2 wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do not. My brother uses it heavily on his WiFi-only iPad Mini.

Perhaps it's country-specific? I just double-checked and the App Store won't list it in the search on my iPad under iPad-only or iPhone-only, nor in Purchased. I'm in the UK. When I first bought WhatsApp, I bought it in iTunes on my Mac. I only had iPod touches and iPads at the time, and it wouldn't sync the application to any of them. I seem to recall that I tried to follow a direct link to the App Store entry from…

You can, but it is not officially supported.

I had to sideload the WhatsApp.apk on to my Nexus 7 Wi-Fi.

Then you receive your activation code on your phone and tab it in on your tablet.

It works perfectly well.

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

#686

Post by bad_user » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 8:45 AM UTC

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…

In Romania many acquaintances used it, but most of them have switched to Facebook's messenger. As I was saying in another comment, if I open my WhatsApp right now, most of the people listed as being on WhatsApp have probably uninstalled it, so there's a very real possibility that messages won't ever reach their target, whereas the new Facebook Messenger for Android is catching on like fire.

In my opinion, this is probably the dumbest acquisition I've ever seen.

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

#687

Post by sentenza » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 8:45 AM UTC

Pxtl wrote: post #491

sentenza wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the network effects are still there if you have an interoperable standard. You can use _any_ app that supports the standard and still connect to everybody in the social network. There is no reason why the social network of mankind should remain captured in the userbase of a single messaging app. And it is the abstract social network that does provide the network effects.

Google tried to get everybody onto jabber. It didn't work and they fell behind, so now we have hangouts.

Did they _really_ try though? Google sometimes fails to appreciate that just "putting it out there" isn't enough.

Funny enough, they also fail to see that forcing people to adopt something doesn't work either. For a company that lives off advertising, they sure don't show much skill at marketing.

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

#688

Post by crucialfelix » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 8:49 AM UTC

guelo wrote: post #524

nullspace wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very good point, even if you don't immediately realize the deeper implications. :) In India, you generally pay per text message - so if you can convince even 3 of your close friends to start using Whatsapp, you save (say) 20% of your phone bill. Here in US, if you are going to send more than a few texts a month, you are going to be paying 20 USD. So there is no real monetary incentive (initially) for you an…

So why didn't Indian telecoms implement all-you-can-eat messaging to stop the erosion of users moving to WhatsApp?

Even better they partnered with WhatsApp and offer "unlimited WhatsApp" packs:

http://telecomtalk.info/tata-docomo-launches-unlimited-whats...

SMS costs Rs1 per

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

#689

Post by alexdown » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 8:49 AM UTC

antirez wrote: post #682

If you have teenager offsprings like me (I've a 13 years old son) you can understand that better maybe. I heard the sentence "We don't need Facebook since there is Whatsapp" an endless number of times from him and his friends. From my point of view at first this didn't made a lot of sense, I considered Whatsapp a no-cost SMS replacement. The reality is that Groups are a killer feature: my son's school class has a gro…

tencent's wechat is being used pretty much in the same way. they also have a "photo sharing" feature (wechat "moments") which approximates very well the action of "putting a pic on my fb status for everyone out there to see".

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

#690

Post by okey » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 8:51 AM UTC

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.

Whatsapp appears to have very little market share in the sparsely populated arse end of the world (Oceania), at least so far as I can tell. Not that that's exactly a large market, but still.