Facebook is paying much more for WhatsApp than it has done for Instagram, but it does more, too.Wednesday, Facebook announced the latest initiative in its quest for mobile social dominance: it plans to buy popular Messaging on WhatsApp for 16 billion $ in a cash and stock deal.
If this sounds like a heck of a lot of money, it should. Facebook says it will pay 4 billion $ in cash and 12 billion $ in stock for WhatsApp, which allows users to avoid paying SMS messaging costs by sending messages to others directly through its application (the $ $ app runs on a variety of mobile platforms: iOS, BlackBerry, Android and Windows Phone). Founders and WhatsApp workers will get an additional $ 3 billion $ in the restricted stock units that vest over four years after the deal is done, says Facebook.
You might think, ' it's like 16 Instagrams! Well, at first glance, Yes. Facebook has spent 1 billion $ for Instagram in 2012, while she was the hottest photos around - sharing application at the time, it seemed to be an obscene amount of money.
But Facebook think obviously WhatsApp worth a lot more, and some of the figures that he shared on WhatsApp users indicate why. WhatsApp a 450 million monthly users, 70 percent of them (310 million) use the service every day. Instagram, as a comparison, currently a far third monthly active users.
Facebook also noted that the number of messages sent via its service "approach the global set volume SMS telecom" (according to the Informa telecom market researcher, would total 19.5 billion last year). And the application continues to bring in addition to 1 million new users each day.
This is the kind of growth that Facebook cannot ignore if it wants to remain a leader in the social and communication networks, and the company knows. As users increasingly migrate as WhatsApp messaging applications, it belongs to Facebook to own the hottest of the bunch. Intelligently, it is keep the WhatsApp brand, as it did with Instagram, which she will no doubt help to maintain its growth.
But beyond the issue of whether WhatsApp is worth the money Facebook is ardently shelling out for it, another is bound to emerge as the acquisition moves forward: what is the next WhatsApp?