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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

#281

Post by btown »

objclxt wrote: post #203
philp wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> In basically all markets outside of the US, however, they are dominating the messaging space ...WhatsApp certainly isn't dominating in the Asian markets, you only have to look at WeChat.

From what I can tell, though, it's literally the two of those that are controlling the space outside the U.S.

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

#282

Post by tomkarlo »

the_watcher wrote: post #274
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…

You also got to add in the 1 million users they have been adding a month. It doesn't substantially change the numbers unless that growth continues for a long time, but Facebook didn't pay for their numbers today, but the numbers they expect them to have in the future.

At 400M users, how much more are they really going to grow? Maybe 2-4x. They're at a point where they're almost bounded by the number of people on earth with mobile devices.

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

#283

Post by IgorPartola »

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…

When Facebook went public they were valued at around $50/user, a number they will never reach. This is going to be a lesson learned the hard way by the investors and once Facebook implodes it will make every investor much more cautious, reducing the capital available to startups all around.

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

#284

Post by mahyarm »

huskyr wrote: post #192
mahyarm wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's shit for mobile.

I guess that's why WhatsApp uses it ;)

Trust me, they've modified it heavily by now and probably use a bunch of side services that don't use it fully. It's a common pattern in messaging startups. Use XMPP, find out ejabberd is the half-decent one, migrate slowly away from XMPP eventually. Facebook had a similar trajectory.

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

#286

Post by bradleyjg »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #184
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…

I conjecture that this price is a reflection of the fact that facebook realizes their stock is way overvalued, and so they used this opportunity to make a huge purchase which would be too expensive otherwise. The fact that a huge amount of the purchase price in stock is a strong signal for this. These same sorts of deals happened in the first internet bubble (although this is clearly different as there is also a huge…

The biggest shareholder hero of dotcom 1.0 was Steve Case buying a real company (Time Warner) with bubble shares. But is whatsapp Time Warner? $1/user/year even with a huge user base is still not that much revenue.

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

#287

Post by iamjustin »

antr wrote: post #17

I used WhatsApp to stay away from FB's chat app. Telegram is picking up popularity within my circles... I'll default to that

Thanks for the tip about Telegram. It's really slick! And it has desktop clients too! Unofficial ones, but still… definitely an improvement from WhatsApp or Hangouts.

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

#288

Post by rikf »

jamra wrote: post #255
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…

Maybe they're not just paying for users. Maybe they're paying for the strong infrastructure of the messenger and the talent associated.

You get a hell of a-lot of R&D, talent infrastructure and pretty much anything for $16B think Facebook with its engineering talent would find it fairly trivial to replicate the tech. The big consumer internet acquisitions are very rarely about the technologies and more about the installed user base.

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

#289

Post by elwell »

the_watcher wrote: post #269
elwell wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they want anything. They just don't want WhatsApp to compete with Facebook chat. The nominal fee charged to users will pare down the userbase and perhaps pay off a portion of the cost of purchasing.

The nominal fee that already exists and hasn't pared down the userbase? Or is there a new fee?

Oh I might be wrong about the fee being new.

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

#290

Post by josh2600 »

kayoone wrote: post #145
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…

why ? viber and whatsapp are still there and will be in the future, i dont see new room for a messaging app.

I harken another commenters words when I observe that this attitude would've prevented the formation of Viber and What'sApp had they simply accepted the status quo of the time. The same could be said of Google competing with Alta vista and Yahoo.

When a large organization acquires a small one, the small organization gains scale and loses the ability to turn on a dime and to compete in the market with agility. It will take 2-4 years to spin up a real What'sapp competitor, at which time the market should be ripe for disruption.

Just my $.02.

Source: I am absurdly deep in the messaging/telecom world.

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