The social media giant Facebook announced yesterday that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire WhatsApp, a rapidly growing cross-platform mobile messaging company, for a total of approximately $16 billion, including $4 billion in cash and approximately $12 billion worth of Facebook shares.
“WhatsApp is on a path to connect 1 billion people. The services that reach that milestone are all incredibly valuable,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “I’ve known Jan for a long time and I’m excited to partner with him and his team to make the world more open and connected.”
Jan Koum, WhatsApp co-founder and CEO, said, “WhatsApp’s extremely high user engagement and rapid growth are driven by the simple, powerful and instantaneous messaging capabilities we provide. We’re excited and honored to partner with Mark and Facebook as we continue to bring our product to more people around the world.”
WhatsApp has seen tremendous growth in recent years, according to a Facebook press release, with 450 million people using the messaging service monthly and one million new users every day.
WhatsApp will continue to operate independently within Facebook. The product roadmap will remain unchanged and the team is going to stay in Mountain View. Over the next few years, Facebook is going to work hard to help WhatsApp grow and connect the whole world. They also expect that WhatsApp will add to their efforts forInternet.org, their partnership to make basic internet services affordable for everyone.
WhatsApp will complement their existing chat and messaging services to provide new tools for the community. Facebook Messenger is widely used for chatting with our Facebook friends, and WhatsApp for communicating with all of our contacts and small groups of people. Since WhatsApp and Messenger serve such different and important uses, they will continue investing in both and making them each great products for everyone.
Read more:
http://newsroom.fb.com/News/805/Facebook-to-Acquire-WhatsApp
