In the last 24 hours, we’ve learned Facebook acquired What’s App for $16 billion. What is What’s App? What does it mean for the two social media giants? What does this mean for you and me?
What’s App is the premier instant messaging app for smartphones. You can send videos, audio, and even maps between phones. It was founded in 2009. By the end of 2013, there were approximately 400 million What’s App users a month. And there are only 32 engineers on What’s App who manage the activity of all these users. The number of users have doubled in less than a year. Maybe that’s why Facebook is so excited about this acquisition.
Also, it’s important to remember What’s App hardly spends a dime, if at all, on advertising and marketing. I learned about it through a friend, and they’re advertising is mostly by word of mouth. Facebook’s bread and butter comes from major advertising. So I don’t know how that’s going to work. But Facebook has been acquiring quite a few companies as of late. Zuckerberg insists Facebook and What’s App are perfect partners. I think the potential is there. But my fear is Facebook is going to change What’s App to what they think it should be. Mr. Zuckerberg, I understand you want to grow your company and I applaud that. But could you please leave What’s App the way it is? It’s working just fine on it’s own thank you very much!
Do you think this partnership is a good thing?