The speed of WhatsApp’s rise so far has been stunning. Last April, it had 200 million users. Since then, it has been adding some 25 million every month, and now boasts upwards of 430 million. Most of those are outside the United States, though it has a sizeable base stateside too. It’s said to be wildly popular in countries ranging from Spain to South Africa to Israel to India, boasting a reported 35 million users in India alone.
Facebook Just Bought What for $19 Billion?
Within the U.S., it’s particularly popular among teens, a demographic that has famously soured on Facebook as a way to stay in touch. Unlike Facebook, teens clearly feel they can share things on WhatsApp without their parents finding out about it. But the app’s appeal is hardly limited to young people. In a December blog post, WhatsApp co-founder, CEO, and soon-to-be-household-name Jan Koum boasted about some of the app’s more TED-talk-worthy uses:
Doctors in India are using WhatsApp to instantly send electrocardiogram pictures of patients who’ve suffered heart attacks, saving valuable time and potentially lives. In the mountains of Madrid, rescuers used WhatsApp to locate and save lost hikers. And today, as I follow the unfolding political crisis in Ukraine, the place where I was born and lived until the age of sixteen, I can’t help but hope that the next great WhatsApp story will be about people using the service to speak their mind and stand up for their basic rights.
So, sure, WhatsApp is a very promising and valuable startup. But is it really worth $19 billion? To most people in the world, no way. But if you happen to be running a company that’s valued at $173 billion and is terrified of losing its core business to mobile-messaging services, then you might start to think it’s worth just about whatever you have to pay.
Article Appeared @http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/02/19/facebook_buys_whatsapp_for_19_billion_what_is_whatsapp.html