The phone app allows users
to send messages using internet connections thus avoiding text charges - and it
already has 450 million monthly users
Social network giant Facebook has bought instant messaging service WhatsApp
for a wallet-busting $16 BILLION (£9.6bn).
The hugely popular phone app allows users to send messages using internet
connections, avoiding SMS charges.
WhatsApp has 450m monthly users - 70 per cent who use the app daily - and
claims to register 1m new users every day.
It is free to use for the first 12 months, after which it costs $1 per year
but will still save the user money on texting charges.
The deal is made up of $4bn (£2.4bn) in cash and $12bn (£7.2bn) of Facebook
shares.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and chief executive of Facebook, said:
"WhatsApp is on a path to connect one billion people.
"The services that reach that milestone are all incredibly
valuable."
The WhatsApp brand will continue and its headquarters will remain in
Mountain View, California.
Facebook recently reported record revenues of $2.5bn (£1.5 billion) from
757 million daily users.
In 2012, Facebook bought photo sharing social media site Instagram for $1b
billion (£600m).
CEO Mark Zurkerberg message on Facebook regarding the aquisition:
I’m excited to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire WhatsApp and that their entire team will be joining us at Facebook.
Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. We do this by building services that help people share any type of content with any group of people they want.WhatsApp will help us do this by continuing to develop a service that people around the world love to use every day.
WhatsApp is a simple, fast and reliable mobile messaging service that is used by over 450 million people on every major mobile platform. More than 1 million people sign up forWhatsApp every day and it is on its way to connecting one billion people. More and more people rely on WhatsApp to communicate with all of their contacts 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, we're going to work hard to help WhatsApp grow and connect the whole world. We also expect that WhatsApp will add to our efforts forInternet.org, our partnership to make basic internet services affordable for everyone.
WhatsApp will complement our existing chat and messaging services to provide new tools for our community. Facebook Messenger is widely used for chatting with your Facebook friends, and WhatsApp for communicating with all of your contacts and small groups of people. Since WhatsApp and Messenger serve such different and important uses, we will continue investing in both and making them each great products for everyone.
WhatsApp had every option in the world, so I’m thrilled that they chose to work with us. I’m looking forward to what Facebook and WhatsApp can do together, and to developing great new mobile services that give people even more options for connecting.
I've also known Jan for a long time, and I know that we both share the vision of making the world more open and connected. I'm particularly happy that Jan has agreed to join the Facebook board and partner with me to shape Facebook's future as well as WhatsApp's.
Jan and the WhatsApp team have done some amazing work to connect almost half a billion people. I can’t wait for them to join Facebook and help us connect the rest of the world.
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