Facebook has just acquired WhatsApp in a multi-billion dollar move. This isn’t the first time the social networking giant has made such a move. What does it mean for us, though? Is it a good or bad move in terms of how it will affect our use of Facebook and WhatsApp?
Facebook spent $19 billion buying WhatsApp. With such a high price tag, Facebook has to believe the company is valuable to them. WhatsApp is a mobile messaging service, yet Facebook users know that it already offers messaging. It seems Facebook saw something in WhatsApp that they knew would make their service better. There’s no mention yet how Facebook plans to use the mobile messaging service, but they’ve made similar acquisitions before with great results and no change to their own services or to the acquired service. Instagram comes to mind instantly. After that acquisition for one billions dollars, our time on Facebook was not affected and neither was our use of Instagram.
The WhatsApp acquisition, though, appears to be Facebook’s most expensive acquisition yet. Will it be a smooth transition like Instagram? Or will this big move somehow affect both our use of Facebook as well as WhatsApp?
Is Facebook acquiring WhatsApp good or bad in terms of what it means for users?
