Disney is valued at $103B. That includes ESPN, parks, cruises, Star wars, movies, merchandise, etc etc etc. So how's What's app is 1/5th of it?
Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
361–370 of 831 posts
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
you mean $1 once when they first install it? the 'pay this amount' was a well known scam message
Android users pay an annual fee.
how on earth do they charge it if you don't have a credit card associated with your play account? Because I've used whatsapp for well over a year and can't figure out how they'd charge me.
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#363This is just ridiculous. As per their latest financial statement, $16B is $B more then they have in the bank. Part of that is stock, but still... On top of that, it's 8 times more then their 2013 net income! People say it's defensive play, but to me it looks like overly aggressive play with huge risk and very little potential. Facebook already has huge market share with their messaging platform, and they really don't…
$12bn of it is stock (as is the employee grant) so in fairness they're paying prices inflated by optimism about retaining and monetizing social network users mainly with currency inflated by optimism about retaining and monetizing social network users.
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#364400,000,000 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
Scale matters. $400M vs $16B.
How much of that $400M price was set based on $-per-user?
On top of that, this was back in the first bubble, and we saw how that went.
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#365Serious question: What is so compelling about whatsapp? There are so many IM protocols out there.
From what I can tell: You just lay it on your phone and it "just works". That is, you use phone numbers and it sorta places SMS. No accounts to create or sign into, no contacts to add, etc.
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#366When these bubbles really get crazy, you start questioning your sanity and wondering whether maybe you're just plain wrong. You actually start wondering if the valuations are justified after all, whether it be a house, stock certificate of a tech company, the mineral rights to some acres in the Haynesville shale, or some land on the Vegas Strip. My head hurts.
To be fair, WhatsApp has an incredible number of very active users. It's not like the companies in 1998/99 which had no revenue, no users, but spent millions on Super Bowl ads. That said, this is a staggering amount to pay. I'm not familiar with Facebook's financials, but I'm surprised they could even afford this. I'd chalk this up to Zuckerberg's paranoia about no longer being #1 and less to a bubble.
WhatsApp has no serious revenue, the valuation is similar to the dotcom bubble in financial terms.
Companies in 1998/99 weren't lacking in users. ICQ was purchased for $400 million in mid 1998, and had over 80 million users a year later (over 100 million by 2001). It too was run by a thin team, of just 70 people total (quite the accomplishment considering the technology of the time).
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#367So, now can we get someone to make an open source, distributed, and NSA secure chat client?
http://mashable.com/2013/07/10/hemlis/
NSA proof messaging app from the co-founder of the pirate bay. The website says they will open source it, however it only runs on their infrastructure.
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#368400,000,000 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
Microsoft also paid $8.5 billion for 663 million Skype users in 2011, which works out to $12.82/user.
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#369When these bubbles really get crazy, you start questioning your sanity and wondering whether maybe you're just plain wrong. You actually start wondering if the valuations are justified after all, whether it be a house, stock certificate of a tech company, the mineral rights to some acres in the Haynesville shale, or some land on the Vegas Strip. My head hurts.
To be fair, WhatsApp has an incredible number of very active users. It's not like the companies in 1998/99 which had no revenue, no users, but spent millions on Super Bowl ads. That said, this is a staggering amount to pay. I'm not familiar with Facebook's financials, but I'm surprised they could even afford this. I'd chalk this up to Zuckerberg's paranoia about no longer being #1 and less to a bubble.
> It's not like the companies in 1998/99 which had no revenue, no users, but spent millions on Super Bowl ads.
It's not? They had users back then, too.
Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs
#370For 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…
What is the analysis that concludes that buying Instagram for that price was cheap?