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by audioglass
4493 days ago
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Long time lurker, first time poster here. There are tons of factors to this deal, but here's a simplistic take. If: (Google acquires WhatsApp and builds from its existing social network of 450m active users to form a mobile version of Google+ on steroids) And: ($19Bn FB investment) minus (Actualized FB profit from WhatsApp over 10 years) is greater than (Potential lost profit to Google+WhatsApp in the social networking space) Then: Buy WhatsApp I also think its been largely undiscussed that WhatsApp was a company desperately wanted by both Google (for a, finally, serious attempt at competing in social networking) and FB (for a bunch of reasons, as well as defending against a potential Google acquisition) really helped to significantly propel this deal valuation. |
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It's text messaging (including group text messaging) over the internet. In other words a very stripped down walled garden email system -- like we had on Prodigy in the mid 80s.
Once it got off college campuses, Facebook's killer app was discoverability. That guy you went to high school with? The girl you met at the party last weekend, and you only know her first name and who she came with? Your brother-in-law's brother who offhandedly mentioned that he had season tickets he wanted to split? All of them could be discovered on Facebook without having to tediously trace the chain.
I'm hard pressed to see how you can have a social network without discoverability, even leaving aside the text only nature of the thing. Pictures were were Facebook's zeroth killer app, without those it never would have taken off even at Harvard.