WhatsApp

Facebook is paying $19 billion for WhatsApp. They have 55 employees. This really puts my company’s acquisition in perspective. We were cheap in comparison.

Perhaps Facebook is buying this company for one of the following reasons.

• To make a poke at the international market. “emerging markets” are mobile only. No computers.
• To put the two massive databases together in order to advertise to the people on both platforms.
• To offer the exact same services without getting sued.
• Facebook may want to use the no advertising model pioneered by WhatsApp.

What is the draw to WhatsApp? It is international texting without fees. You can also do voice and video messaging pretty easily. You can use groups. You can opt out of groups without contacting the person who made the groupe or so I hear. That is nice.

I had heard of this app before. Someone liked it for the international text messaging feature. Not phone to phone, app to app. Still, it saved money. I thought that was all it was about.

They have the word “shit” on their front page. I like that. They are quoting a movie while speaking about their disdain for advertisements. Somehow they make money elsewhere. Not sure where they make their money, but they did only have 55 people working there so it was chugging along cheaply.

I use Google talk or gtalk or Google chat or Hangouts or whatever they are calling it this week for pretty much the same functionality.  I believe Hangouts is not available in all the countries and the mobile app is kind of clunky. Hangouts does allow for computer to phone use. WhatsApp is strictly phone to phone (device). It also doesn’t appear to use my Google address book which is a pain.

Haven’t actually tried the WhatsApp client. Probably won’t now that it is part of facebook. I never even used the Facebook chat app. Why?

Of course Facebook is telling people it will leave the existing model in place. That is such bullshit. Why do companies bother lying to people any more? Everyone knows it will be Facebook-ised as soon as they get the keys to the front door.