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

711–720 of 831 posts

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

#711

Post by theintern »

boomzilla wrote: post #466
scrabble wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first year free just ran out. They sent me a message that I get to continue for another year for free. It's hard to believe anyone pays for this.

Have you been a heavy user? I have a sneaky feeling that they will let light users have it free, but start charging heavy users. That makes sense, because if you are a light user, there is not a lot incentive to pay.

I'm an extremely heavy user, hundreds to thousands of messages and images per day, and I've had the same messages so I think it's the heavy users that they're allowing for free.

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

#712

Post by swah »

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…

And you can't even turn off Group notifications...

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

#713

Post by ojii »

xerophtye wrote: post #656
jonnathanson wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We can assume Facebook is paying for the user base" Respectfully, I don't know if that's the right assumption. Facebook has users. A metric shit-ton of them. :) In fact, many of WhatsApp's users are Facebook users, and vice versa. This isn't a user acquisition play. It's a user engagement play. Facebook -- like everyone else in the world -- is well aware that it has an engagement problem. It also has a retention pro…

>WhatsApp is a lot bigger overseas than it is in the US (largely because it's a free alternative to SMS in countries where SMS carries significant charges). Not nitpicking here, just genuinely curious. What do they charge in US for sms? Here the cheapest package i suppose would be 20,000 SMS per month for $1 per month. I normally use the 1200 SMS per week for 10 cents per week though, as my usage isn't that much.

likely a reason WhatsApp is popular in Europe (or at least Switzerland) is that one is likely to have friends in other countries, and international SMS are a rip-off. At least that's why I use LINE/gtalk/fb messenges a lot these days, as they don't care about where people live/are.

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

#714

Post by MartinMcGirk »

adsche wrote: post #671
russell_h wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the time smartphones were widely adopted in the US, SMS already had massive market penetration. Trying to adopt something else when your entire social network already uses SMS is a losing game. This is why, IMO, Apple, Google and Facebook are the only companies really in a position to change the messaging game in the US. There is space for newcomers (see: Snapchat), but they're going to have to work hard to spread…

I don't know, SMS was huge in Germany as well, there were unlimited plans etc., still, today everyone uses WhatsApp. Group messages, broadcasts, media, cross-platform, and it's of course easier to convince people to use WhatsApp than Facebook. I lived in the US for a while, and I can't really come up with any reason why it should be different there. Only that way more people are on Facebook (and those are also way mo…

SMS was (still is) huge in the UK too, but all of my friends started using WhatsApp because you could send pictures to each other on WhatsApp without having to use MMS which cost more, was always a hassle to set up and wasn't available on every phone back in the beginning.

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

#715

Post by adnam »

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…

> I think it's time for someone to build a new messaging app

And that it precisely what I am helping to do!

We have built a Whatsapp-style messenger, with the added benefit of being able to make free calls to US, Canadian and UK numbers. We also launched a data-SIM plan last week for $15/month. Check it out: http://upptalk.com and http://uppwireless.com

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

#716

Post by pdpi »

higherpurpose wrote: post #253
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

You mean almost at the height of the dotcom bubble? Maybe that should say something about this acquisition.

You mean one of the more sensible purchases amidst all the idiocy of the first dotcom bubble? I mean, I fail to see how buying Hotmail was a bad idea for Microsoft.

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

#717

Post by jey »

anigbrowl wrote: post #547
statictype wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simple. It's instant. Not everyone (especially in Asia) has a Facebook account or even wants on. SMS was already what was powering communications in Asia. Whatsapp took SMS , added images, group chat and removed the cost. Also, it was free and works on Android (Very important in South Asia). Many older people get smartphones just to use whatsapp to communicate with others. I'm not joking. I upgraded my mom to a…

I guess I'm confused because there are lots of messaging apps, eg http://personalweb.about.com/od/mobile-messaging/tp/8-Mobile... and indeed Android's built-in messaging. I'm not trying to dismiss whatsapp, just having a hard time seeing what makes it distinctive.

Supposedly they have a huge install base in many (non-US) markets. The idea is probably that network effects will make it so that they'll continue to be the dominant player for a long time.

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

#718

Post by chiari-show »

jackgavigan wrote: post #321

Social networking is all about network effects. The biggest threat to Facebook's position at the top of the pile is that another social network will come along, start to gain traction (most likely initially with users that aren't current Facebook users - e.g. early teens) until it reaches a tipping point where current Facebook users start migrating to the new social network because that's where the people they want t…

so you think that the goal was to not have any competitors in the smartphone messaging? because Instagram and Whatsapp are not Social Networks.

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

#719

Post by kayoone »

bsder wrote: post #555
zanny wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll shake my first and one day see people using open standards protocols rather than this morass of proprietary dribble. Until then, I'm marginally lonely on my xmpp clients, though the facebook integration really helps.

The messaging part isn't the problem. The value in Skype, WhatsApp, etc. is the vast amount of work and codebase that goes into punching holes in routers/gateways/NATs to make the internet actually work like it was originally designed.

WhatsApp is not p2p, they maintain a constant server connection which is not a problem for routers/gateways/NATs because its initiated from the client side.

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

#720

Post by jpkeisala »

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

On the other hand Microsoft buying Nokia's phone business in a $7.2 billion seems like good bargain since they are supposedly have more than billion users. WhatsApp is just an App.
Post reply on HN