Facebook to buy Whatsapp for $19 billion.

[Printer Bandit]

Whazzup

Trademark pending

 

[BurnItDwn]

As a whatsapp user I find this news very disappointing. Not a fan of FB at all, never had one never will, but all my friends use whatsapp, domestic and international. I'll have to eventually find an alternative service to use, but whatsapp is the only one I know that everyone uses (except of course the ATers who don't socialize with people).

While it is disappointing, I would also sellout for $19b in a heartbeat (even though it's not really $19b in cash).

I'm pretty sure most of us would sell out for 1% of that

 

[GTaudiophile]

So Zuck has decided to help out an old chum by making them super rich. Now they can all be super rich together and have a great old time. So sweet.

Exactly. Nothing more to see here than Billionaire mutual masturbation.

I have lots of FB friends from Germany, Greece, Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, etc. and many of them dumped their WhatApp today and posted it on FB. I LOLed.

 

[randay]

blackmail, obviously.

 

[The_Dude8]

Whazzup

Trademark pending

Whassup

Trademark pending.

 

[JJChicken]

WhatsApp is free, I get free subscription extensions all the time.

 

[AViking]

I looked at my "subscription" and my whatsapp "expired" in one year and 2 days. Never paid for it though and have had it for over a year. Deleted the account and uninstalled.

Everyone I know moved on in the last 24 hours. My German friends in particular were not pleased. Not sure why it seemed to piss them off more than the rest.

 

[BladeVenom]

Things That Are Cheaper Than Facebook Buying WhatsApp:

 

[Red Squirrel]

Saw that on Reddit. It really puts it into perspective. Think of all the work that went into those things, then look at some random chat app lol. I never seen it so I don't know if it does anything way out of the ordinary, but I can't imagine some random app being worth billions. Really makes you go WTF.

Imagine if Facebook bought Hubbel though.

"You have been tagged!" (picture of you coming out of grocery store)

 

[Printer Bandit]

A long game is being played.

 

[Nintendesert]

The better long game would have been to buy the aircraft carrier.

 

[Triumph]

Things That Are Cheaper Than Facebook Buying WhatsApp:

Assuming these numbers are correct, more people need to be made aware of this. Where are our priorities as a society? And where is the facepalm icon?

 

[lamedude]

Only $4B is in cash. The rest is stock which Zuck must think is over valued if he's going on a spending spree with it.

 

[kt]

I had no idea what Whatsapp was until I heard about them getting bought up by Facebook for $19B. I got curious and Google'd them.. messaging app, really?

 

[lyssword]

fucking bullshit fake money.. just another way the country is siphoning $ from masses to .0001%.
This is really bad for the economy, extreme wealth concentration in techno-elite

 

[yhelothar]

Another asset I perceive facebook to see from Whatsapp is the vast amount of data about people from its 450m users. Facebook is transforming into an intelligence company. Its assets isn't so much its ability to feed advertising to its millions of views, but its vast amount of data it has on people. Facebook is building up an artificial intelligence empire with some of the most talented people in machine learning to process this vast amount of data.

 

[jpiniero]

Only $4B is in cash. The rest is stock which Zuck must think is over valued if he's going on a spending spree with it.

Even $4B is way too much.

You know what they say, there's a Zucker born every minute.

 

[Jodell88]

Assuming these numbers are correct, more people need to be made aware of this. Where are our priorities as a society? And where is the facepalm icon?

 

[mikeymikec]

Things That Are Cheaper Than Facebook Buying WhatsApp:

I don't believe the water one. I bet that's the sort of estimate that a government department gets for some project and then it turns out to be an order of magnitude higher, as usual.

Has someone really looked into the exact cost of fixing all the different water supply problems in the world combined? Who would be footing the bill for the investigation alone? It's just a single one-time cost figure, no maintenance?

Shens.

I bet that one of the supersize-corporations we have around today would strongly consider donating the whole amount if it was an accurate figure and pretty guaranteed fix, think of the kudos, customer loyalty and publicity they would get as a result. Last time I heard, Apple has a $300B war chest? The US government would probably snap up that offer in exchange for later favours in the business department.

- edit - AND sanitation? Give me a break. Up to what standard, a developed country's? Anyone believing this figure is so gullible. I'd bet that China's environmental pollution problems alone would cost that much to fix.

- edit - Of course sanitation would have to be fixed in order to fix a country's water supply problems, I just didn't consider that part of it initially, not really my field of expertise

 

[Capt Caveman]

Another asset I perceive facebook to see from Whatsapp is the vast amount of data about people from its 450m users. Facebook is transforming into an intelligence company. Its assets isn't so much its ability to feed advertising to its millions of views, but its vast amount of data it has on people. Facebook is building up an artificial intelligence empire with some of the most talented people in machine learning to process this vast amount of data.

This. Whatsapp adds 1 million users a day making it one of the fastest growing apps out there. Time will tell if FB overpaid but currently FB stock is at an all time high. :thumbsup:

 

[biostud]

It's virtually unknown in Denmark, as most phone plans include free unlimited sms+mms.

 

[zinfamous]

lol: Iceland

Elon Musk would have used that cash to build a Hubble-like project, or possibly the aircraft carrier. Zuckster is a tool.

 

[_Rick_]

That picture is also nice, when you look at relative value.

Especially when you see that a single aircraft carrier costs more than Hubble, while a few movies cost about as much as both combined. And those few movies cost more than the entire music industry?
Hollywood accounting truly is magic.

 

[WelshBloke]

This. Whatsapp adds 1 million users a day making it one of the fastest growing apps out there. Time will tell if FB overpaid but currently FB stock is at an all time high. :thumbsup:

I'm not surprised. Facebook now absolutely own instant messaging. Its a growth form of communication and with the combined share of facebook messenger and whatsapp they have a massive amount of momentum to steam roller that entire communication type.

Imagine if someone had been able to make email proprietary and get a global monopoly on it. How much do you think that would have been worth?

Thats what Facebook is aiming at. I'm amazed that a lot of you are so mystified by this.

 

[Red Storm]

Yeah the confused comments asking why they spent so much on a messaging app need to realize that it's not the app, it's the ridiculously large Whatsapp userbase that FB is buying.