FollowWe saw yesterday how Facebook is planning to add an in-app digital payment service that will allow people to send money to each other over Facebook Messenger and today we’ve got another news that was long time coming: Facebook closes purchase of WhatsApp for a cool $22 billion.
Facebook Closes Purchase of WhatsApp
Facebook’s shared went up to $77.76 (an increase of 32 cents) in trading on Monday and the reason for that is the fact that Facebook finally closed the purchase of WhatsApp, which started earlier this year. The company paid almost $22 billion on the app, three billion more than what it intended to originally; the reason in paid $3 billion more is that Facebook shares are rising in price.
Facebook closes purchase of WhatsApp and welcomes Jan Koun (WhatsApp co-founder and CEO) to its board. This is one of the biggest deal ever made by a tech company, bigger than any deal struck by Microsoft, Google or Apple.
WhatsApp has been growing incredibly rapid and it’s a huge hit in some developing countries such as Brazil and Russia. It has more than 500 million users and now that Facebook’s got it, it’s going to grow like nothing we’ve seen before. Facebook already has its own chat app, called Messenger, but rumors are saying that it’s planning to use both at the same time, and not merge the two apps.
Why is WhatsApp so popular? Because it’s a simple app that does not require any signing in and lets users chat with their phone contacts, as well as send texts, videos, photos and voice recordings over Internet. With no ads whatsoever, the app is free for the first year and then it costs 1$ per year. What’s not to love about WhatsApp?
Do you use WhatsApp? Care to comment on the news? Drop us a line in the comment section below.
