Facebook Inc will buy fast-growing mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock. That's $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in shares, and $3 billion in restricted stock for the founders and employees that'll divest over the next 4 years.
"Our mission is to make the world more open and connected," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post. "We do this by building services that help people share any type of content with any group of people they want. WhatsApp will help us do this by continuing to develop a service that people around the world love to use every day."
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| (Credits : Facebook) |
Facebook, of course, has their own popular IM app, Facebook Messenger, just like they had their own photos platform before they bought Instagram. WhatsApp has 450 million monthly active users, more than 70 percent of whom are active on a daily basis, Facebook said in a press release. The service is also adding 1 million new registered users per day. Like Instagram, WhatsApp will remain its own app, and be run independently from Facebook.
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| (Credits : Facebook) |
The astronomical price tag demonstrates just how eager the social network is to subsume one of its largest challengers -- at least in terms of audiences. Though largely focused on member-to-member messaging, 5-year-old WhatsApp is grown to be greater than one-third the size of Facebook and offers a more insular social networking experience beloved by youngsters and foreigners.
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| (Credits : Facebook) |
"You can continue to use WhatsApp no matter where in the world you are, or what smartphone you're using," Koum said. "And you can still count on absolutely no ads interrupting your communication. There would have been no partnership between our two companies if we had to compromise on the core principles that will always define our company, our vision and our product."
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