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

techcrunch.com

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

#781

Post by United857 »

yapcguy wrote: post #340
dba7dba wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

What's remarkable is that they've built up a strong engineering team without very much media attention in Silicon Valley to cultivate a "hot startup everyone wants to work for" image.

The opposite of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Dropbox, Palantir, etc...

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

#783

Post by bad_user »

russell_h wrote: post #661
shubhamjain wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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…

In Romania WhatsApp is fairly popular, but it's declining. About 60% of my phone's contacts have had it installed at some point, but I noticed that many of them have uninstalled it.

Its popularity has been declining due to Facebook and Android - Facebook on Android works really well lately, most of my acquaintances are on Facebook already and everybody with an Android (which is most of my acquaintances) has either Facebook or Facebook Messenger on it. This is happening because Facebook is the messenger that finally dethroned Yahoo Messenger in my country - really, I'm serious, Yahoo Messenger was still really popular until about 2 years ago. And Android penetration has been phenomenal, due to cheap models being advertised by mobile carriers and sold instead of feature phones.

> Their logical endgame is to move all messaging to the Hangouts protocol, and fall back to Google Voice to deliver messages to users who don't have a Hangouts client.

You're a US citizen and so you might have missed the part where Google Voice is not available outside the US - no alternative can win over SMS, unless it is international.

I actually hate them for trying to take over my SMS messaging and I'm glad that I still have the option of not allowing them to do it on my Android, even though I'm also a regular Hangouts user. What is it with these companies trying to be everything to everybody?

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

#784

Post by mulletbum »

lancewiggs wrote: post #244
frandroid wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook and Twitter are seasonal?

Where the seasons extend over a few years - yes. MySpace, Friendster, Slashdot, Hotmail etc. were the same.

Slashdot? Was this because of Digg?

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

#785

Post by fizx »

nullspace wrote: post #422
crucialfelix wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp has huge global growth. I heard that little chirp everywhere I went in India. friends in Africa use it all the time. in countries with SMS charges, whatsapp is a good deal.

> in countries with SMS charges The funny thing is that in places like USA, you pay exorbitant amounts (~20 USD per month) for text messaging (when the real cost should be almost 0), yet it's still not caught on here - which is kinda sad.

iMessages

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

#786

Post by DerpDerpDerp »

harryh wrote: post #594
DerpDerpDerp wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You dropped a zero. 16B * 10% * .5% = 8 Million

You are correct; I had actually meant 0.05%.

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

#787

Post by vanessarp »

slazaro wrote: post #698
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…

In Spain, SMS was also the main way of communicating with mobile phones (pre- and post-smartphone). The benefit of WhatsApp was that you didn't have to move to a different "social network" with usernames and stuff, it just used your contact list, and that it didn't cost anything besides your internet connection. So if someone had WhatsApp, you used that, otherwise you texted them through SMS. You almost end up avoidi…

In Spain everyone uses it, from 12 to 60 years old. My mother in low just wanted a smartphone to have Whatsapp. The new trend is Telegram though...

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

#788

Post by kylec »

xbadxapple wrote: post #709
kylec wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd heard the name, but I've never used the app and don't know anybody that does. Though according to this article ( http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/20/whatsapp-dld/ ) they have hundreds of millions of active users, so clearly some people are.

Strange, where are you from? I'm the same as you - heard the name, never used the app. In the recent 4-5 months though all of my friends migrated to WhatsApp. I'm from Eastern Europe and when I cruised around other countries from the region there were many people who used that too. Maybe has to do with the fact that some telecoms still charge insane prices for a piece of SMS when you deplete your free quota.

I'm from the northeast US.

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

#790

Post by ZoFreX »

treerock wrote: post #732
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…

Still struggling to figure out why it's so popular. I read the other article[1] on the front page suggesting that the reason for the popularity is that the app works on low end handsets. But then so does SMS. Is the design of WhatsApp so much better than built in SMS, or is it just the fact that WhatsApp is free? [For me and most people I know SMS is virtually free, but I guess that's not the case around the world] […

I would pay maybe £0.09 per SMS if I wasn't on contract. As it is, I am, but I still have to pay to get a delivery notification - that's £0.01 per message or £0.02 depending on your contract. I send maybe 100 messages per day on Whatsapp and probably about 3 texts.

Also, where I live (UK) literally everyone I know who has a smartphone is on Whatsapp. It's completely ubiquitous.

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