Shrewd Or Desperate: Facebook To Buy WhatsApp For $19B In Cash And Stock [Marketing Land]

Additional details:

"Beyond WhatsApp advancing Facebook’s mission of making the world “more open and connected,” here are some of the numbers and motivations behind the deal:

• WhatsApp could have become a major competitive threat to Facebook over time 
• The company is one of the fastest growing in startup history 
• It has 450 million active users globally; it’s bigger than Twitter 
• It replaces SMS and may ultimately steal messaging volume and revenue from global wireless carriers 
• The company hasn’t spent any money on marketing and yet it has seen remarkable viral growth 
• It costs $1 per user per year (so there’s already a lot of revenue) 
• The team is relatively small, under 50 employees"

Shrewd Or Desperate: Facebook To Buy WhatsApp For $19B In Cash And Stock