Facebook Takeovered Mobile Messaging Specialist WhatsApp

Mobile messaging company WhatsApp is to be purchased by the social media Facebook in a $19 billion (£11 billion) deal, the deal includes $4 billion in cash and approximately $12 billion worth of Facebook shares.

This is the largest takeover of a social networking company in years, giving Yahoo! its own social media platform in a bid to attract younger and trendier internet users to match rivals Google and Facebook.

WhatsApp also has 450 million very valuable users. That could quickly surge to 1 billion as WhatsApp is adding about 1 million customers per day, Zuckerberg said, and any company with 1 billion users is extremely valuable. 

Facebook has said time and time again that it aims to connect the world, and now WhatsApp is tasked with helping the social network achieve that goal.

Speaking out on the deal Koum, who will join Facebook's board of directors stated:

“WhatApp’s extremely high user engagement and rapid growth are driven by the simple, powerful and instantaneous messaging capabilities we provide.
He added: We’re excited and honoured to partner with Mark and Facebook as we continue to bring our products to more people around the world.”

Auction site eBay was hailed as being ahead of the game when it acquired video calling service Skype in 2005 for a surprising $2.6bn.

In 2009 eBay sold a majority stake in the company to an investment consortium at a profit.

In 2011, Skype was sold again to Microsoft for a massive $8.5bn.

Flickr is another takeover success story - the image and video hosting site was bought for a reported $35m in 2005 and now has more than 51 million registered members and 80 million unique visitors.



Author Venkatesh Yalagandula Follow us Google + and Facebook and Twitter