I was wondering how in the world WhatsApp will ever make some serious money despite offering great service. Now we all know. They just made a ton of cash and then some.
Facebook acquired these guys for the record-breaking $19 billion! That’s an impressive amount of money for any company, let along the one that’s been around for just 5 years. Of that sum, $16 billion will come in cash and shares, and an addition $3 billion in restricted stock.
Yeah, Facebook is betting big on messaging and wants to tap WhatsApp’s huge user base to show them some ads.
Speaking of user base, WhatsApp has 450 million users (compared to Facebook Messenger’s approximately 53 million), while adding 1 million new users per day. Even more impressive, 70% of WhatsApp users are active every day.
“WhatsApp’s extremely high user engagement and rapid growth are driven by the simple, powerful and instantaneous messaging capabilities we provide,” said Jan Koum, WhatsApp co-founder and CEO. “We’re excited and honored to partner with Mark and Facebook as we continue to bring our product to more people around the world.”
Similarly to Instagram, WhatsApp will maintain its brand and will continue to operate as a standalone application.