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Facebook to Buy WhatsApp for 16 Billion

posted by Dopefish on Thursday February 20 2014, @09:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the when-will-this-darn-bubble-pop-already? dept.

lubricus writes "Facebook announced plans to acquire WhatsApp for four billion cash, plus 12 billion in Facebook shares.

Additionally, WhatsApp employees and founders will receive three billion in restricted stock which will vest in four years. Facebook also agreed to a one billion dollar break up fee.

WhatsApp says they have message volume which approaches the global SMS volume, and hope to have one billion users. Even at those figures, Facebook is paying $16 per user.

I'm guessing WhatsApp will send Snapchat developers a cake."

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Jaruzel on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:36PM

    by Jaruzel (812) on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:36PM (#3384) Homepage Journal

    My daughter, and her collection of same-age friends all reacted to the Facebook buyout news by immediately dumping whatsapp (which up until then was their platform of choice) and switching to BBM[1] this morning.

    -Jar

    [1] No, I don't get that choice either. Teenagers huh ?

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by hitsuji on Thursday February 20 2014, @01:15PM

    by hitsuji (2300) on Thursday February 20 2014, @01:15PM (#3405)

    BBM was always popular with teenagers in the UK. Now there is an Android client it becomes an attractive alternative to Whatsapp. I use it myself to chat with my daughter.