Posted on 02/23/2014 3:42:43 PM PST by TBP
The nation’s newest billionaire is a rags-to-riches success story who escaped communist Ukraine as a teen and lived on food stamps in the United States before hitting it big with a messaging app that has become the hottest thing in social media.
Meet Jan Koum, the 37-year-old college dropout who, with his partner and mentor, Brian Acton, just sold their startup, WhatsApp, to Facebook for $19 billion in cash and stock.
Koum is now worth $6.8 billion.
It’s a long way from the government-assisted, two-bedroom apartment in Mountain View, Calif., where he came of age with his mom, and even farther from his rural childhood home in Kiev that had no hot water.
They did have a phone in Kiev, but his parents — a housewife and a construction manager — rarely used it because they feared it was tapped by the state.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Zuckerberg is an idiot. He has all the voting shares in Facebook and can do whatever he wants. This company won’t even exist in five years. And if Zuckerberg keeps running things, neither will Facebook.
Irony of ironies! He was born in the Ukraine and his parents “rarely used their phone because they feared it was tapped by the state.” Now he’s a billionaire in the United States and he KNOWS for certain his phone is tapped by the state.
$19,000,000,000 for social media games.
Boop boop boop.
The electronic pacifier pacifies.
says they guy posting on FR
Is anyone capable of explaining how this acquisition is worth $19 billion.
I saw some article that said that Facebook with WhatsApp now has access to everyone’s phone directory.
Is that what this is all about???
Zucky paid 19 billion?? For a few million he could have designed just as good an app for free texting etc and promoted the s___ out of it.
WhatsApp Free Texting Seen Siphoning $33 Billion From Carriers
Olga Kharif, Amy Thomson and Patricia Laya, ©2014 Bloomberg News
Published 1:02 am, Friday, February 21, 2014
http://www.sfgate.com/business/bloomberg/article/WhatsApp-Free-Texting-Seen-Siphoning-33-Billion-5254562.php
I use what’s app on occasion. I don’t have unlimited messaging. I use what’s app to text a few people I text a lot. It cost me nothing. I save overage fees. It is worth nothing I’d pay for.
You have an answer to “Boob boop boop” but nothing for the guy predicting that the company won’t exist in five years?
Who knows it not. I mean they are down to something like 800 million customers.
Somebody went from food stamps to fortune and you can bet didn’t stop on the way to ask for advice here!
Funny how he didn’t let the minimum wage stop him.
********** thanks worth posting
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FaceFart Swallows A Grenade
I was too busy chortling with glee at this particular piece of stupidity to write on it last night.... so you get it this morning.
Facebook Inc.’s $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp Inc. is valuing the text-messaging service at a multiple investors currently only bestow on companies developing life-saving drugs.
Zuckerberg is the one doing the drugs, and so is his board.
The basic premise is to try to “grab” back younger users that are fleeing the site. The problem with it is that like so many other so-called “Web 2.0” properties the company has essentially no hope of turning a profit and frankly, I suspect Facebook bought it only because it is desperate to try to find a way to both stem those defections and kill potential competitors — by eating them.
Unfortunately WhatsApp is a relic of a time when mobile carriers charged by the message; that was what gave it a foothold in the marketplace, as it didn’t — its “free for the first year” model looked attractive. Unfortunately its model was predicated on you giving them your phone number, which now turns your phone into a spam magnet as the company has it forever and it follows you.
The firm of course touts this as “good” as it makes you friends able to find you easier. But what it is also does is forces you to change your number, which is monstrously disruptive for real people doing real productive things, when someone decides to make your life a living hell using that information.
Go ask anyone who has found themselves on the receiving end of that sort of thing about how much fun it was. Then consider that Facebook is continuing to enable that sort of crap.
In the end desperation moves, and paying 19x a ridiculously rosy forward projection in sales certainly qualifies, tells you more about the buying company than the acquired one.
In this case the dilution Facebook shareholders are going to take in this deal is likely to be the least of the damage they suffer in the ensuing quarters.
I thought 19 billion was a misprint at first. Even 1.9 billion would have been a WTF? price, IMHO.
just remember ... he didn’t make that
Zucky blows 19 billion here on a fading technology...Meanwhile the cheap b****** is spending millions on open borders amnesty etc advertizing and propaganda so he can get foreign programmers cheaper. Idiot!!!
Not idiot - it just proves open borders is not about the money, but about getting rid of American jobs. Zuk is just another Silicon Valley Rat traitor.
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