With each big acquisition, there are people who will promise to stop using a certain app

Feb 20, 2014 09:42 GMT  ·  By

There are thousands of WhatsApp users that don’t like the fact that their go-to app has been bought by Facebook and are threatening to stop using it.

Of course, that’s not exactly uncommon. It’s the knee-jerk reaction when news comes that an independent product you’ve used for years gets swallowed up by a big corporation.

There are privacy concerns, of course, as well as the general fear of change. Despite reassurances from both Facebook and WhatsApp that nothing is going to change and that there won’t be a flood of ads on the platform, users continue to complain.

Of course, it’s rather inevitable for WhatsApp to lose some users in the process, but it will most likely win over even more via Facebook’s extra-large user base.

After all, the app isn’t the first one to hear such complaints. Many voices claimed to quit a service in protest when it was acquired, including when Tumblr was bought by Yahoo, or when Nest was acquired by Google.

The bottom line is that such threats will be made each time a big company acquires a small business. Users need to understand, however, that money is the only thing that will keep businesses afloat and big corporations are, ultimately, a sure source of funds for their favorite apps. With the new source, they’ll be able to continue innovating without worrying about their funds running low.

Fans may sometimes feel like companies accepting an acquisition deal are selling out, or that they simply don’t care about their users. Contrary to this belief, however, companies are actually looking at the bigger picture, as anyone with a business should do.

WhatsApp’s team will now have access to more money than it ever could through the extremely cheap subscription plans it was offering users, which, in turn, will give developers more room to create.