While some are reporting the purchase to be at $19 billion, and others at $16 billion (Facebook’s official number is the latter), it seems that Facebook is still after successful messaging apps and was not deterred by the Snapchat fallout late last year.
Though one is to, of course, wonder if Snapchat would have still said no had the offer been $16 billion.
While the future of WhatsApp is on the mind of the 450 million active monthly users, Facebook has assured that the service will remain and that it is not meant to be a replacement for Facebook’s messaging service.
Mark was quoted saying earlier in January saying:
We just think that there are all these different ways that people want to share, and that compressing them all into a single blue app is not the right format of the future.
Though the purchase may be quite huge (and makes Instagram’s acquisition sort of ‘meh’ by comparison), it certainly is an indication that this is a significant investment to their long term strategy. We’ll keep an eye out for any privacy changes on WhatsApp’s end, but in the meantime, users can rest assured that there will be no ads showing up in the service.
Whether the yearly payment plan will stay, however, is still unknown.
