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pinaceae

it's the 19bn$ that's completely dumb.

whatsapp's entire business model is charging 1$ per month. for a little less than 19bn $ you could:

- build an app doing exactly the same

- run a media/marketing ad blitz

- charge 50c per year. or make it for free, until whatsapp is dead.

if it's about the awesome talent at whatsapp, 32 engineer can be hired for 19bn $. each one of the whatsapp members could have been acquired for less money besides the 2 founders.

it makes no economic sense. as in old school economics, not the valley funny money one.

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don't you think that Facebook has tried this already? Facebook Messenger/Messages has a non trivial number of engineers working on it, but it still doesn't have the usage that WhatsApp does.

True.

It's worth adding that Facebook Messenger itself began (or was at least jumpstarted) with the acquisition of a company called Beluga in 2011.

Facebook has definitely made an effort to get into this space -- not necessarily a failed effort, at that -- and it's been trying for years. The idea that "Facebook can just build its own WhatsApp and market it" is silly, especially in light of Facebook's history here.

I'm not convinced $19B was a reasonable price for WhatsApp, unless, as I suspect, there was some heavy competitive bidding pressure. (Google tried to buy the company at $10B not very long ago; I'd imagine there were counteroffers between G and FB, which FB ultimately won at $19B.)

FB messenger isn't a replica precisely because it ties into FB. WhatsApp made it a point to be extremely easy to sign up for and to not require any other major social media accounts.

Somewhat ironically, Facebook may have been more successful in replicating WhatsApp if they had also made a messenger that was not connected at all with Facebook other than its corporate origins.

This seemed to work for AIM and AOL.

Or you could build the app and pay each user $1 every month that they're active.

You could pay 450M users a dollar a month for 3.5 years, then let network effects lock them in.

Facebook could've even paid users in Facebook stock to use their all instead of WhatsApp.

Well, buying WhatsApp for 16B is a guarantee they're no longer a competitor and you have their entire audience. Your plan takes 3.5 yrs longer, and it has a high chance of failure.

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