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Facebook buys whatsapp for 19B$

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Raghav_12 Newbie

Raghav_12

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http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/whatsapp-co-founder-jan-koum-s-rags-to-riches-story-486157
WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum's rags to riches story San Francisco: Jan Koum, an immigrant from Ukraine, was so poor as a teenager that he used to save his old Soviet notebooks for school and queued with his mom for food stamps. Brian Acton lost a small fortune in the dot-com bust and was rejected for jobs at Twitter and Facebook. Now, the friends behind the hot mobile messaging startup WhatsApp are the newest tech industry billionaires. Facebook this week bought WhatsApp in a stock-and-cash deal worth up to $19 billion and gave Koum a seat on the social network's board of directors. Koum signed the Facebook takeover contract at the unused building where he and his mother once queued for food stamps in the Silicon Valley city of Mountain View, where WhatsApp is located, according to Forbes Magazine. Koum, who turns 38 on Sunday, has described growing up as a rebellious Jewish child near Kiev and having little when he immigrated to California with his mother at the age of 16 just after the Soviet Union's breakup. His father did not make it to the United States, where the family sought to escape anti-Semitism and oppressive tactics of secret police. "Jan's childhood made him appreciate communication that was not bugged or taped," Sequoia Capital partner Jim Goetz said in an online post. "When he arrived in the US as a 16-year-old immigrant living on food stamps, he had the extra incentive of wanting to stay in touch with his family in Russia and the Ukraine." Koum's mother brought with her a cache of pens and Soviet-issued notebooks to save money on school supplies, according to Forbes magazine. A self-described trouble-maker at school, Koum had a job sweeping the floors in a grocery store. After his mother was diagnosed with cancer, they got by on disability payments, Forbes reported. Koum learned computer networking from manuals bought from, and eventually returned to, a used book store, according to the account. He enrolled in a state university in Silicon Valley and was working on the side with a computer security firm when he met Acton while on assignment at Yahoo in 1997. Acton was employee number 44 at the Sunnyvale, California-based Internet firm and shared a "no-nonsense" attitude with Koum. Within a year, Koum was working as an engineer at Yahoo and the pair was on their way to being close friends. Koum eventually chose Yahoo over college. When Koum's mother died of cancer in 2000, his mentor Acton stepped in with support. Acton, meanwhile, reportedly lost millions investing during the famous dot-com boom that ended with an infamous dot-com bust. Acton and Koum left Yahoo in 2007 and took a year off, exploring South America and playing the sport of Ultimate Frisbee, according to Forbes.
Pretty inspiring. :hatsoff:
veer Newbie

veer

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FB will be integrating Watsapp with their other apps .. so, in near future, if you dont have FB acct then you won't be able to login to Watsapp.. i dont have FB account so soon i'll be without watsapp.. One thing I dont get is that Watsapp is not very popular in main stream US market.. it is more for foreigners. Then was it worth paying this much money for information on Ramesh from Ghaziabad.. or Hugo from Rio or Taibu from Nairobi.. ?? People will switch to other application once watsapp displays ads and stuff.. I doubt if I'll stay on watsapp if it asks me to register for FB acct. There gotta be a different plan..

Yoda-esque Newbie

Yoda-esque

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FB will be integrating Watsapp with their other apps .. so, in near future, if you dont have FB acct then you won't be able to login to Watsapp.. i dont have FB account so soon i'll be without watsapp.. One thing I dont get is that Watsapp is not very popular in main stream US market.. it is more for foreigners. Then was it worth paying this much money for information on Ramesh from Ghaziabad.. or Hugo from Rio or Taibu from Nairobi.. ?? People will switch to other application once watsapp displays ads and stuff.. I doubt if I'll stay on watsapp if it asks me to register for FB acct. There gotta be a different plan..
That's good,I will leave Whatsapp then,they better not auto register me due to me having whatsapp
Crookbond Newbie

Crookbond

Posted
Posted
FB will be integrating Watsapp with their other apps .. so, in near future, if you dont have FB acct then you won't be able to login to Watsapp.. i dont have FB account so soon i'll be without watsapp.. One thing I dont get is that Watsapp is not very popular in main stream US market.. it is more for foreigners. Then was it worth paying this much money for information on Ramesh from Ghaziabad.. or Hugo from Rio or Taibu from Nairobi.. ?? People will switch to other application once watsapp displays ads and stuff.. I doubt if I'll stay on watsapp if it asks me to register for FB acct. There gotta be a different plan..
Your answer is in your question. You need to understand that Facebook has already made a decision that mobile is the next big thing. A significant percentage (and growing) of Facebook access is via mobile. Facebook is now into buying the most significant apps which can help its mobile strategy - photos (Instagram) and messages (WhatsApp). It wanted to buy SnapChat but it declined and SnapChat is getting even more popular with the kids than Facebook. WhatsApp is more popular in non-US markets and particularly in India. Internet penetration (in terms of broadband) is abysmal but the 2G market (enough to use WhatsApp) is very good. Makes perfect sense to buy it out. Btw, there's some crazy sh1t shared by law enforcement agencies via WhatsApp in India.
sachin34357 Newbie

sachin34357

Posted
Posted
Your answer is in your question. You need to understand that Facebook has already made a decision that mobile is the next big thing. A significant percentage (and growing) of Facebook access is via mobile. Facebook is now into buying the most significant apps which can help its mobile strategy - photos (Instagram) and messages (WhatsApp). It wanted to buy SnapChat but it declined and SnapChat is getting even more popular with the kids than Facebook. WhatsApp is more popular in non-US markets and particularly in India. Internet penetration (in terms of broadband) is abysmal but the 2G market (enough to use WhatsApp) is very good. Makes perfect sense to buy it out. Btw, there's some crazy sh1t shared by law enforcement agencies via WhatsApp in India.
example
Sachin=GOD Newbie

Sachin=GOD

Posted
Posted
FB will be integrating Watsapp with their other apps .. so, in near future, if you dont have FB acct then you won't be able to login to Watsapp.. i dont have FB account so soon i'll be without watsapp.. One thing I dont get is that Watsapp is not very popular in main stream US market.. it is more for foreigners. Then was it worth paying this much money for information on Ramesh from Ghaziabad.. or Hugo from Rio or Taibu from Nairobi.. ?? People will switch to other application once watsapp displays ads and stuff.. I doubt if I'll stay on watsapp if it asks me to register for FB acct. There gotta be a different plan..
right now there's no indication of that... same here...if FB does integrate watsapp.
Switchblade Newbie

Switchblade

Posted
Posted

WhatsApp down for 3 hrs, 3 days after FB deal; service restored today http://www.hindustantimes.com/technology/apps-updates/whatsapp-crashes-three-days-into-facebook-deal/article1-1187264.aspx WhatsApp, the rapidly expanding mobile messaging app, suffered an outage for more than three hours on Saturday, frustrating users just days after its acquisition by Facebook for $19 billion. "WhatsApp service has been restored. We are so sorry for the downtime...," WhatsApp tweeted to its more than 1 million Twitter followers on Saturday around 5:48 p.m. EST (2248 GMT).Earlier, the service had said it was "experiencing server issues" without providing further details. Facebook referred questions on the outage to WhatsApp representatives, who did not immediately respond. WhatsApp, the rapidly expanding mobile messaging app, suffered an outage for more than three hours on Saturday, frustrating users just days after its acquisition by Facebook for $19 billion. "WhatsApp service has been restored. We are so sorry for the downtime...," WhatsApp tweeted to its more than 1 million Twitter followers on Saturday around 5:48 p.m. EST (2248 GMT). Earlier, the service had said it was "experiencing server issues" without providing further details. Facebook referred questions on the outage to WhatsApp representatives, who did not immediately respond. Five-year-old WhatsApp currently has about 450 million users globally and has been adding a million users daily. On Saturday, some of those users took to other forms of social media, including blogs and Twitter to report the outage and vent their frustration.WhatsApp is the leader among a wave of smartphone-based messaging apps that are now sweeping across North America, Asia and Europe, and is known to appeal to teens and others who avoid mainstream social networks. During the outage the buzz on Twitter ranged from the conspiratorial - that Facebook had really bought WhatsApp to shut it down and funnel users to Facebook Chat - to the philosophical."So now that #Whatsapp isn't working I've actually talked to my family, they seem like nice people," tweeted @Ali_Hilu, a self-described social media addict in Jordan. And @Iamhollybrown of Surrey, England, scolded, "Can't believe all these people are crying about Whatsapp not working, do some exercise, do some work, learn a language."

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