14 DAY TRIAL // Why would Facebook pay $19 billion for a messaging app? Well, the answer is quite simple when you take into consideration all of Facebook’s efforts thus far.
The social network has been trying for years to get access to the same type of tool, but not even building its own app worked. Furthermore, the launch of Facebook’s Messenger didn’t even make a dent in WhatsApp’s growth, especially since it’s somewhat limited by comparison.
Under the circumstances, WhatsApp is somewhat of a threat to Facebook when it comes to grabbing users and giving them a free, easy-to-use messaging tool for all their contacts, something that Facebook doesn’t have access too.
WhatsApp has a massive user base from all over the world. It may not have the same number of users as Facebook, but then again, it’s just a messaging app and not a full-on social network. Regardless, WhatsApp has some 450 million active users each month and processes some 27 billion messages each day, which is impressive by any standards.
As mentioned above, a huge part of WhatsApp’s user base is international, while most of Facebook’s users come from the United States. This means that through this acquisition, Facebook could win over even more users.
Furthermore, messaging tools have always been extremely popular. In the past several years, smartphone apps that offer a free, Internet-based, alternative to SMS have grown into some of the biggest names in the business.
Viber, Snapchat and BBM are just some of the names that join WhatsApp on the list of popular tools.
Even so, when compared to other tools from a number of domains, including Facebook itself, Gmail, Twitter and Skype, WhatsApp's user growth has been spectacular in the past four years, as a graphic put together by The Verge reveals.
It should also be mentioned that WhatsApp seemed to be the only alternative left for Facebook if it really wanted to purchase a messaging app. Viber has already been acquired, BBM is not for sale, while Snapchat turned down a $3 billion (€2.18 billion) offer from Facebook.
The social network may have paid a total of $19 billion (€13.8 billion) for WhatsApp, but its huge user base is certainly worth that much.
