Facebook buys WhatsApp for 19B

Facebook announced on Wednesday afternoon that it reached an agreement to buy popular mobile messaging startup WhatsApp for an upfront total of $16 billion, including $4 billion in cash and about $12 billion in Facebook shares.

Source

They got a good deal for only 19B, but do you think it was worth it? Facebook has a reputation for buying competition, like Instagram. WhatsApp is a free messaging service that is popular in the UK and South America. After I think it's a year for fully using the app for free, you have to pay $1 a YEAR to continue using it. Facebook seems immensely desperate at this point to avoid an incident like Myspace. The app has 400m active users gaining around 1 million new members each day.

Thoughts?

 

[DarkFrost]

God Damnet! This was the only alternative to get free text messages. Well this just sucks

 

Grasping at straws. Kids & teens have moved from Facebook and now Facebook is just used by their parents lol. Kids don't use Facebook, it's not "cool" to use Facebook. It's cringey to hashtag on Facebook.. etc. Twitter/Instagram has taken over.

 

God Damnet! This was the only alternative to get free text messages. Well this just sucks

Kik :nuts: ?

 

[DarkFrost]

Grasping at straws. Kids & teens have moved from Facebook and now Facebook is just used by their parents lol. Kids don't use Facebook, it's not "cool" to use Facebook. It's cringey to hashtag on Facebook.. etc. Twitter/Instagram has taken over.

My whole school uses facebook, no one in my school uses Instagram or Twitter. That's China for you.

 

Ah, well definitely in the UK or my area it's dead

 

God Damnet! This was the only alternative to get free text messages. Well this just sucks

I don't think that will change. Why would they buy a cheap service only to add higher restrictions on it? That would only ruin them. The most I see facebook doing is making you connect your facebook to the app to log in or something along those lines.

 

[Stoof Mate]

Whats app is a widely used messaging service a good business move in my opinion

 

[Sorry Im F2P]

Meh it's more so an monopoly situation, if you wanna use ANYTHING these days, it's tied to Facebook, Adverts for things like this will make the money back soon enough, $1 a year for unlimited messaging and picture messages? Like yeah, who could really complain about that?

I'll continue to use it very rarely but none the less it's still useful, I'm just wondering where FB will be going next.

 

[Vox Populi]

I wonder if Facebook ever considered how astronomical the decrease in member activity will be, and eventually member loss overall, as they creep closer and closer to having to the one year mark where they'll be asked to pay $1.

 

[Fazdam]

Facebook is dying out, many kids moving onto insta

 

[DarkFrost]

Facebook is dying out, many kids moving onto insta

Not true in china! I have 300 friends on facebook. I go online at noon and there is around 200 people online.

 

Not true in china! I have 300 friends on facebook. I go online at noon and there is around 200 people online.

That isn't credible information to support your claim. That is like me saying "KFC is losing it's customers to Popeyes", and someone telling me that isn't true because they saw someone go and order in KFC.

 

[DarkFrost]

That isn't credible information to support your claim. That is like me saying "KFC is losing it's customers to Popeyes", and someone telling me that isn't true because they saw someone go and order in KFC.

Your statement is not true. It might be different in USA or other countries. I'm saying that it is totally different in china.

 

Your statement is not true. It might be different in USA or other countries. I'm saying that it is totally different in china.

Saying Facebook is dying is a generalization statement. It does not matter if facebook is still popular in your region, that may not be the case in other places.

 

[S]

Grasping at straws. Kids & teens have moved from Facebook and now Facebook is just used by their parents lol. Kids don't use Facebook, it's not "cool" to use Facebook. It's cringey to hashtag on Facebook.. etc. Twitter/Instagram has taken over.

Everyone here uses Facebook, and around 80% that use Facebook use Instagram. However their activity on Instagram is probably 10% comparative to their Facebook usage... however there are those that use both equally, and then those that either just use one or the other. I use both, facebook more however.

Nothing relative to being cool, or anything you said here. I personally think Facebook is great, and without it I probably wouldn't have gone to half the 21sts/events and what not I have been to.

One thing I can say though is, from my around 10-15 closest friends, if they/I didn't have facebook, it wouldn't impact how much we saw each other/wouldn't distance us.

But yea, Facebook should have taken the WhatsApp devs on board when they approached them 5 years ago. Dat 19B.

 

[Trin]

I would say the only way Assbook will make any profit from this is to do away with Assbook messenger and use Whatsapp as the replacement, charging the $1 yearly fee.

 

[Phony]

In my opinion I think that it was a bad buy for Facebook, this is because of the amount of people that are going to stop using whatsapp, another free text messenger app is bound to come out sooner or later.

 

[YoungBuck-]

Facebook is dead anyways. No-one like's to use it in the netherlands.

 

[Loyal 2 da game]

yeah, facebook is still somewhat popular where i live. i have something like ~500 friends, and only 60 post anything daily. most people i know just check it once or twice a day out of boredom and that's it

ive also never heard of whatsapp, so