Facebook buying WhatsApp

[BillyB]

An over-valued purchase and monopolistic maneuver. If you can't challenge your competition, buy them! The valuation assumes each whatsapp user is worth $42 to FB.

But, then again, 50 times revenue is par for the course on recent social media valuations.

Bubble, yes, will it burst, not sure.........

[Barnsley]

An over-valued purchase and monopolistic maneuver. If you can't challenge your competition, buy them! The valuation assumes each whatsapp user is worth $42 to FB.

But, then again, 50 times revenue is par for the course on recent social media valuations.

Bubble, yes, will it burst, not sure.........

Are you quoted on any of the local websites regarding this purchase by FB?

[Mi Amigo]

Well of course everyone is saying that Whatsapp will continue to operate as a stand-alone company, so nothing will change, blah, blah, etc. But that's probably what they said when Microsoft bought Skype and then they subsequently made significant changes around the privacy (or not) of voice and message data. Obviously FB will want some kind of return for their massive investment, so everyone will have to be 'monetised' in one way or another.

I've always assumed that when I send a message via Whatsapp (or normal email, SMS, etc. for that matter), it's basically like sending a postcard; i.e. if 'someone' wants to read the message as it goes through the system, they can, and probably will.

As an alternative to Whatsapp, I like the look of Threema...

https://threema.ch/en/

[BillyB]

An over-valued purchase and monopolistic maneuver. If you can't challenge your competition, buy them! The valuation assumes each whatsapp user is worth $42 to FB.

But, then again, 50 times revenue is par for the course on recent social media valuations.

Bubble, yes, will it burst, not sure.........

Are you quoted on any of the local websites regarding this purchase by FB?

Only under a pseudonym.

Regards,

Terence Wat

[pisceangirl]

An over-valued purchase and monopolistic maneuver. If you can't challenge your competition, buy them! The valuation assumes each whatsapp user is worth $42 to FB.

But, then again, 50 times revenue is par for the course on recent social media valuations.

Bubble, yes, will it burst, not sure.........

I read that they paid $12 bn in FB stock. Considering that FB stock itself is considered "overvalued", doesn't it "offset" the cost in a way? (for FB?)

[PNGMK]

I use Viber. Switched some time back when I suspected Whatsapp was jumping the shark. For all intents and purposes it's just as good.

I haven't logged into skype for over a year and we only use FB to look at pics and even that interest is dying.

[Wd40]

Facebook is basically to show off and make people jealous, nothing else.
"Look what an exotic location, I am having a vacation in" or "Look I am having dinner at this great place tonight"

[zzm9980]

The most insane thing is how such a small company of just 30 engineers managed to gain a valuation of 16B. A company of the might of Sony that has given the world such brilliant products is only 1.5B more worth than this Whatsapp deal.

If the dotcom was a bubble, then what will you call this?

Dotcom was a bubble because investors were throwing money at companies hemorrhaging cash. This time, the companies are turning profits. It's all still crazy, but I'm not sure when the 'burst' will be.


An old roommate is Whatsapp engineer 7 or 9 or something. Lucky bastard, we used to sit around asking him how Whatsapp ever planned to make money. Apparently they figured it out.

[zzm9980]

I mainly use Viber. Not sure who owns it though.

Rakuten owns Viber, a giant eCommerce conglomerate. If you think they have your best interests at heart more than Facebook, it's only because they haven't figured out how to best monetize your eyes yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakuten

[zzm9980]

Facebook is basically to show off and make people jealous, nothing else.
"Look what an exotic location, I am having a vacation in" or "Look I am having dinner at this great place tonight"

This post, brought to you by "WD40's Daily Extremely Myopic View of the West by an Indian Person".

[zzm9980]

So now even if I delete my WhatsApp account, Facebook will have my phone number anyway?

If any of your friends with Facebook have your contact on their phone and ever synced their contacts list with Facebook or FB Messenger, they have all of that information anyway.

[sundaymorningstaple]

Facebook is basically to show off and make people jealous, nothing else.
"Look what an exotic location, I am having a vacation in" or "Look I am having dinner at this great place tonight"

This post, brought to you by "WD40's Daily Extremely Myopic View of the West by an Indian Person".

ROTFLMAO!

[BillyB]

An over-valued purchase and monopolistic maneuver. If you can't challenge your competition, buy them! The valuation assumes each whatsapp user is worth $42 to FB.

But, then again, 50 times revenue is par for the course on recent social media valuations.

Bubble, yes, will it burst, not sure.........

I read that they paid $12 bn in FB stock. Considering that FB stock itself is considered "overvalued", doesn't it "offset" the cost in a way? (for FB?)

Now there's a can of worms for discussion!

[PNGMK]

As my 12 yo son said today;

Facebook just bought Whatsapp for $19 billion. Idiots, they could have just downloaded it..

[Max Headroom]

^ +1