Facebook Acquires Whats App for $19Billion

Today, Facebook announced that it acquired WhatsApp for $19Bn. Facebook the World’s largest Social network today acquired WhatsApp in a deal that is reported to have been over Chocolate berries as WhatsApp founder crashed Mark Zuckerberg’s Valentine Dinner.

According to Bloomberg, This is the biggest internet deal since Time Warner’s $124 billion merger with AOL in 2001. The deal will include $12bn in stock and $4m in cash and $3bn in restricted Facebook Shares

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With Japan’ Rakuten having acquired Viber just a few days ago, Analysts say that Facebook, with a lot of money in its coffers is on an “amass and conquer” strategy just like Google earlier did and continues to do. “With the ever fragmenting Social media space, It makes sense for Facebook to consolidate its position”

Facebook a while back acquired Instagram for $700m in 2012 and recently offered SnapChat $3bn which they rejected. Facebook’s strategy is to reach more users on Smart phones and tablets and to grow its user base at all costs.

“The Acquisition supports Facebook and WhatsApp’s shared mission of to bring more connectivity and utility to the world by delivering core internet services efficiently and affordably”

Facebook said in a statement

WhatsApp is a unique multi platform messaging service that allows users to chat/send messages across the world sharing pictures, Videos, Voice messages, contacts and even location without network charges as long as one can has an internet connection. With a user base of over 450M users and still growing, WhatsApp has 361M active users. WhatsApp is free for the first year and then $1 the next year. It can be compared to Apps like Chinese WeChat, Japans Viber and Line or South Korea’s Kakao talk.

What the Multitude of WhatsApp users are concerned about is if Facebook will ruin the WhatsApp experience with Ads that its known for on its platform. Koum the WhatsApp founder in a statement to Bloomberg said that, WhatsApp will remain autonomous in operation and will remain ad free.

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What do you think of the merger? do you support it or do you believe that WhatsApp should have remained independent? share your thoughts in the comments

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