The popular social networking
site, Facebook made a shocking revelation, as it announced its plan to buy
WhatsApp for a whopping $19bn (£11.4bn). This deal is Facebook’s biggest
acquisition, till date. The deal is even bigger than the last year deal, where
Facebook bought Instagram (the photo-sharing app) amounting to $1bn. According
to the new deal, Facebook will be paying a mix of cash and stocks to the
popular messaging services wherein $4bn (£2.4bn) will be paid in cash and around
$12bn (£9bn) will be in the form of Facebook shares.
Besides this, all the WhatsApp's
founders and employees, that is, 55 in total – will be provided with stocks
worth $3 billion that will entrusted after four years following the closing of
the deal. In a statement made by Facebook – WhatsApp will carry on functioning independently and will keep
hold of its brand, in spite of the acquisition.
This deal is the biggest buyout
than Microsoft, Google and Apple Inc. deals.
Is the Deal Worthy?
WhatsApp boasts more than 450
million users and is showing no signs of stopping and is rather experiencing a
phase of explosive growth. According to The Guardian – the company is believed
to engage million new users with each passing day. Besides, the messaging
service users are assumed to be devoted, with over 70 percent of users
utilizing the service on a daily basis.
In a statement made by Facebook founder and CEO – Zuckerberg, "WhatsApp is on a path to connect 1 billion
people - it is a milestone that the company is believed to reach which is
incredibly valuable". Adding to it, Zuckerberg further said that “I've known WhatsApp founder Jan Koum, since a long time and is equally excited to becoming
a partner with him and his team to make the world more open and
connected."
Purpose behind Facebook to Make
This Deal
The deal made by Facebook is
intended for its audience, mainly the teenagers and younger age groups who are
using the WhatsApp messaging service to carry out online conversations outside Facebook.
Not only the young adults, but the messaging app has also become a hangout for
people of all ages.
However, the deal is mainly to
attract younger users who are always keen to take up something ephemeral that
change with time. And the deal made by Facebook is definitely going to help it
fulfill its aim.
The buyout does make sense as
Facebook looks forward to lure around additional one billion users whilst
keeping its current 1.23 billion users, majorly comprising of teens. The social
networking site said that in future it will be developing a “multi-app''
strategy. With help of such strategy the company aims at building its own
applications that will be present outside the social networking site and will
be obtaining others.
What Could be the Cons?
Well, you might be forced to join
the social networking site – Facebook. But, not all uses Facebook, which also
includes a lot of WhatsApp users. We might could face a situations wherein in
order to use WhatsApp, users might have to login in to Facebook.
No comments:
Post a Comment