May 2009. An engineer with a good resume and experience in the world of new technologies called Steve Acton on Twitter looking for work. No luck. Three months later, on August 3, suffered a second setback in his attempt to find employment and type a tweet: “Facebook has rejected me. It was a great opportunity to connect with great people. We will have to find a new life adventure. “
He sought and found. Acton became part of an initiative that had been launched (and already baptized) a former coworker at Yahoo!, an engineer of Ukrainian origin named Jan Koum also sucked in their day to work for Facebook. Redefined together a modest (Media) Mobile Application project in just four years has ended up being a world leader telephone message, has retired to sms are expensive and ended up being part of the lives of many people. Of course, we are talking about Whatsapp.
You know the story. Acton has finished connecting with that “great people” of Facebook. He and sold Whatsapp Koum Mark Zuckerberg for an astronomical figure: $ 19,000 million (13,850 million)
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According to Forbes, the man who said no to the Human Resources department of The Social Network will be 3.000 million. And is that having a mobile program using more than 450 million people worldwide suffering and explosive growth (increased 100 million users in the last months) are worth a lot of money. As much as you paid the largest social network on the planet for a company that had so far 55 workers on the payroll? Is the exorbitant price paid for Whatsapp?
Tranquility market
By advertising buying market did not punish the overpriced Operation Facebook, most made in the recent history of new technologies. Even the actions of social network rose. It should be recalled that Google paid in October 2006 about 1,650 million for Youtube (1,300 million euros). And the company’s own Instagram Zuckerberg took 1,000 million dollars in 2012.
In these two operations were paid higher prices than it did valuations and income levels. But they went well. Both Youtube and Instagram have grown very rapidly since its acquisition. Both were strategic purchases based on future expectations to fill key positions in essential services to the population of the information society and aimed at preventing competition was done with them. In this context, the rumor mill suggests that there was also an offer from Google for Whatsapp that was around 10,000 million.
The key is Mobile
Facebook wins global reach with purchase. Zuckerberg’s company is very strong in the United States. And Whatsapp has a good presence in markets such as Western Europe, Mexico, India, and Brazil, according to the New York Times.
In Spain Whatsapp is an almost universal service. In 2012, according to a study echoed tech magazine Techcrunch, monopolized 97% of the market for messaging applications and Facebook Messenger was content to 13%. No wonder the word wasap aspire to enter the RAE dictionary.
The situation is very different in the United States, where the new jewel in the imperial crown of Zuckerberg just had that presence in year 7% of smartphones.
Facebook it plays with Whatsapp. And not just because you paid an astronomical amount, but because the operation will limit your ability to acquisitions. He bought expensive, and only time will tell if it will work out, but analysts say it has moved in the right direction. It does not take an expert to know that the future of Internet is mobile (smartphones facilitated advertising to Facebook earn more money than ever in 2013). And this is a universe where there is popular application Koum and Acton (both with significant experience in advertising), which grew by word of mouth digital, no ads or large marketing campaigns, and now part of everyday life people in different parts of the world.
The official blog of Whatsapp put several examples of the utility of the program: love reunited, mountain rescues, political activism … The Koum own dares to proclaim that improves the lives of people who use it. And nobody in their right mind could argue its usefulness. Although you can live without.
privacy Nightmare
The news of the sale of Whatsapp caused a fire on the Net Twitter boiled with critical comments showed that many people do not trust Facebook. And the reason is not that the film The Social Network has drawn a dark portrait of Mark Zuckerberg, billionaire and powerful when you have not yet turned 30, but doubts about the effective control of privacy and what will be the fate of personal data stored Whatsapp now.
German privacy regulator, Thilo Weichert, has advised all users should seek safer alternatives to the instant messaging service for talks.
Many users do not control what parts of your Facebook activity are accessible to everyone. And the revelations about the massive spying agency of the U.S. NSA in the network have caused a wave of distrust of a company, as manifested in the trending topic Feb. 19, does not enjoy popular support. Does dissatisfaction will result in a rout? We will have to wait and see.
class=”texto”> What will Whatsapp?
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does seem pretty clear by now Whatsapp continue as a separate service. And they are not going to abandon the conditions that made it succeed. Just one day after the announcement of the purchase, the service has been updated to improve privacy in Android by allowing the user to hide a key figure, that of the last connection.
There manifestly positive aspects of the sale to Facebook. They are mostly technical. Facebook engineers reinforce the compact team led Koum and Acton, to the relief of the machines that support the endless stream of messages every second channeled Whatsapp. Also will make a decisive contribution in the fight against annoying spam and always irrelevant.
What will the competition?
The hegemonic position Whatsapp has been threatened in recent months by new messaging applications. Line sought to gain a foothold in the market with a strong advertising campaign and a lot of marketing. Got notoriety, but has not yet succeeded.
The application now emerging as an alternative to WhatsApp originated in Ukraine. Called Telegram, has garnered rave reviews and has taken the popular anger with Facebook to attract hundreds of thousands of users. It has several advantages: its security and encryption is robust, multi-device and it can be used from a PC. Weakens in the multimedia section, but will be a more than worthy opponent waiting to know what Google plans to do.
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