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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

#751

Post by notlisted »

lucb1e wrote: post #643
notlisted wrote: post #544

I know What's Up. Facebook just bought the world's largest (and unlisted) mobile phone number directory: WhatsApp's convenient 'matching by phone number' feature uploads of all of your phone contacts to their servers. Though positioned as one of the good guys, they too had their price. With this acquisition, FB bought the ultimate data set of users and leads, and with it secured access to the last remnants of your pr…

Exactly my thoughts. Any idea how to get out of Facebook's database? I'd be willing to pay but then they have my full name instead of just a fake and my phone number.

No clue. I'm actually inclined to start a petition to stop this deal. Too much information in the hands of one company if you ask me.

Note: as a self-described Google fanboy, I do realize that Google has all this and more of me as well, but at least they provide many useful services, haven't changed the privacy rules on me, allow data export, and keep the data to themselves.

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

#752

Post by fab13n »

fastest963 wrote: post #700
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…

Are the groups better than what you'd be able make/do on Google Hangouts?

A network's value is correlated to the number of (potential) friends reachable through it, and how easily you can.

There are many almost-non-technical reasons why Hangout isn't an adequate replacement for Whatsapp:

- not intuitive enough to create and keep hangout groups. I can probably use G+ circles, but that's cumbersome.

- I believe that you need a GMail account. There are people without a GMail account I want to reach in group chats, and expecting them to create a new mail account for that feels like too much asking.

- the big amorphous G+ blob is so shapeless that we can't think of it

It's _possible_ to use Hangouts, possibly with other bits of G+, as a Whatsapp replacement, but it's not easier nor more obvious. Google didn't envision it that way, they wanted you to produce more durable (and searchable) stuff as G+ posts, and to manage access through a circle system that appeals the 5% of the population with an engineering degree. They don't care about technologically-illiterate people, nor those without a GMail account, let alone without a smartphone.

But we shouldn't care about why G+ isn't an adequate Whatsapp killer, as Google didn't buy them. What's interesting is, why FB couldn't build it?

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

#754

Post by neves »

molmalo wrote: post #621
zippergz wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only speak for myself, but in the US I have never seen any need for it. I text or iMessage with my friends, and while I have had WhatsApp installed for a long time, I've never found something it does better for me. If I needed to communicate with people I couldn't text with, or if I were paying per text, it would probably be more compelling.

Well, to give you an example, here in Argentina, almost everyone in my phone's contact list uses WhatsApp. Here, the fact that you pay per message is a big incentive. But there are other advantages, like instant delivery, being sure that the message was received (double-check), better feedback ('X is online' when using the app, 'Last seen at 09:22', X is writing...), media sharing, groups, etc. simple things that hel…

In Brazil, sometimes a SMS message takes hours to arrive. My bank sometimes send a validation code by SMS, but I can't use it because it expires before arriving.

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

#755

Post by the_watcher »

throwawaymsft wrote: post #440
the_watcher wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is their stock overvalued? Do you have any evidence of this beyond you thinking there is a bubble? Honestly curious, since it seems to me their stock is rising for a reason: the fundamentals of the company are strong, and they have demonstrated an ability to rapidly react to new trends.

They have a P/E of ~100. They'd need to grow earnings 7x to reach a typical P/E of ~15. Not saying it's impossible, but they're already very large. They have as many users as they're going to get (who isn't on there now?) so they need to earn 7x the income from the existing base.

Well, they continue to add users (albeit more slowly), and the world population is increasing, so I don't see any evidence that they won't add any new users. They actually don't even have 20% penetration of "everyone" by monthly active users, and I'd argue Facebook is on its way to being as ubiquitous as email.

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

#756

Post by the_watcher »

tomkarlo wrote: post #392
the_watcher wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, given that there are roughly 7 billion people on earth, and the number with mobile phones is currently 4.3 billion, that means WhatsApp is at 9% penetration of a still growing market. I think they can grow a little bit more than you estimate, and regardless, 4x of 400mm is an increase of 1.2 billion users.

There's only about 1bn smartphone users, of which Whatsapp probably has 45% penetration, and some other large percentage are on competing platforms. Yes, that 1bn is growing, but it's also moving into market segments with much lower income levels. Even if we think this is going to increase 4x that probably doesn't justify a 12X sales valuation.

That one billion number is not static. And it has a lot of room to grow.

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

#757

Post by neves »

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 value of WhatsApp is that it is a real social network. Its data is much more valuable than the Facebook friends network, because your contact list have the people you really know and communicate. The greatest threat to FB isn't the SMS features, but that it is a better social network than FB itself.

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

#759

Post by JTon »

jpkeisala wrote: post #720
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

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.

Whatsapp is incredibly lean. I believe the only have 32 engineers working for them. I can imagine Nokia has much more expensive baggage in their name

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

#760

Post by AznHisoka »

zanny wrote: post #543
nullspace wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'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.

Trillian! Seriously...ok, I get that these apps like WhatsApp, Viper got tons of users, but please don't give me no BS about them innovating. Trillian solved that problem a long long long long time ago.
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