Facebook and WhatsApp

http://applenapps.com/industry-news/facebook-to-buy-whatsapp-messenger-for-16-billion.html

WhatsApp is an extremely popular messaging app across multiple platforms that serves up over 10 billion messages a day. Today, Facebook has acquired WhatsApp for $16 billion, and it’s official with a filing with the SEC . The purchase breaks down as $4 billion in cash, and $12 billion in Facebook stock with a potential $3 billion in employee stock payouts. Also, WhatsApp founder Jan Koum will join the Facebook board of directors.

Four years ago, Brian Acton was looking for a job.

His job at Yahoo, where he’d filled many engineering roles over 11 years, had come to an end.

He was networking with recruiters:

networking with recruiters, venture capitalists, playing ultimate frisbee— 
Brian Acton (@brianacton) May 20, 2009

He met with Twitter. Twitter said no:

Got denied by Twitter HQ. That’s ok. Would have been a long commute.— 
Brian Acton (@brianacton) May 23, 2009

He met with Facebook. Facebook said no:

Facebook turned me down. It was a great opportunity to connect with some fantastic people. Looking forward to life’s next adventure.— 
Brian Acton (@brianacton) August 03, 2009

So he and Jan Koum, a colleague from Yahoo, set out to do their own thing.

Today, they sold that thing to Facebook for 19 billion dollars.

Life is crazy.

$19 billion is…

• 4x the market cap of BlackBerry
• Approximately one-third the market cap of Ford
• 2.8x the market cap of GroupOn
• Effectively equal to the market cap of The Gap
• Slightly more than Sony’s market cap (around 10 percent)
• Around three-fourths the market cap of Delta
• 7.5 Mark Cubans
• Almost precisely one-third of HP’s market cap
• 2 nuclear submarines
• 62 percent of Twitter’s market cap
• 76,000 trips to space on Virgin Galactic
• Almost 60 percent of Sprint’s market cap
• 25 Instagram acquisitions