Asking the Right Question About the WhatsApp Acquisition

by Nibletz Staff in NIBZnotes, Startup News
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whatsapp acquisition

From Benedict Evans

Facebook just bought WhatsApp, paying $16bn in cash and stock and $3bn in RSUs. WhatsApp has 450m active users, of which 72% are active every day. It has just 32 NibzNotes34engineers. And its users share 500m photos a day, which is almost certainly more than Facebook.

This is interesting in all sorts of ways – it illustrates most of the key trends in consumer tech today in one deal.

First, it shows the continued determination of Facebook to be the ‘next’ Facebook. It’s striking to compare the aggressive reaction to disruption shown by Google, Facebook and other leading web companies today with how some of their predecessors a decade ago stumbled and lost their way.

Second, the winner-takes-all dynamics of social on the desktop web do not appear to apply on mobile, and if there are winner-takes-all dynamics for mobile social it’s not yet clear what they are. There are four main aspects to this:

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10 Surprising Facts About the WhatsApp Acquisition

by Monica Selby Monica Selby in Featured, Startup News
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Watching Twitter during a big acquisition is fun. You get absolutely no work done, but the level of intelligence, snark, excitement, and sour grapes that comes across your feed makes it totally worth it.

rsz_incontentad2On the off chance you missed it, today Facebook announced the acquisition of WhatsApp in a $19 billion (BILLION) deal. The messaging app–which has enormous international usage–sold for $4 billion cash, $12 billion in Facebook shares, and $3 billion in restricted stock.

In case your math is as bad as mine, that’s 19 Instagrams. (We always thought Instagram sold too early.)

Here are some other little known facts and stats about the WhatsApp acquisition:

1. WhatsApp’s founders made about $5 billion EACH. (click to tweet)

2. Sequoia Capital, WhatsApp’s only investor, made $2.4 billion or enough to buy 17 of Tom Perkins’ yachts. (click to tweet)

3. At acquisition WhatsApp is worth 2 Staples + 2 Instagrams. (click to tweet)

4. Each employee at WhatsApp created as much value as the entire Washington Post did in 137 years. (click to tweet)

5. In one day, WhatsApp processes 4x as many messages as there are humans on the planet. (click to tweet)

6. In the last 9 months, WhatsApp added 1 million users a day. (click to tweet)

7. WhatsApp has 2.5x more active users than Twitter. (click to tweet)

8. By market cap, WhatsApp is the 200th largest company in America. (click to tweet)

9. WhatsApp is worth the same as Kroger, with 6,000x fewer employees. (click to tweet)

10. NASA’s 2014 budget: $17b. WhatsApp: $19b. (click to tweet)

Bonus fact: WhatsApp is worth more than Southwest, Coach, Chipotle, News Corp, Under Armor, Dr. Pepper & Tiffany. (click to tweet)