Facebook has announced that it will buy the international text messaging application What’sApp for $16 billion in cash plus $3 billion worth of Facebook stock.
Now, Facebook already has its own message app with Facebook Messenger. So, what does Facebook want with WhatsApp?
Well, according to industry pundits, Facebook is looking to expand their mobile messaging footprint, and to woo the younger set.
“WhatsApp will complement our existing chat and messaging services to provide new tools for our community,” said Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. “Since WhatsApp and (Facebook) Messenger serve such different and important users, we will continue investing in both.”
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However, here at the Internet Patrol, we think that in large part, Facebook is paying for WhatsApp’s 450 million users, many of whom are not Facebook devotees. Moreover, WhatsApp is adding new users at the whopping rate of 1 million a day. (Although it will be interesting to see if the news of WhatsApp joining the Facebook Borg Collective will slow that down.)
In the meantime, current WhatsApp customers are expressing concerns, in forums and comments to articles, about Facebook’s swallowing up of WhatsApp, which has been providing advertising-free, international text messaging, for just 99cent a year, to a devoted community for several years.
Said one concerned WhatsApp user, “I just want Facebook to leave me the hell alone!”
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