6 Must Know Facts about Facebook-WhatsApp deal

The biggest acquisition in history of IT industry made recently. Two big names of social media, one is Facebook, world's largest social networking site and other is WhatsApp, world's largest instant messaging company. Recently Facebook has bought WhatsApp for $19 billion. In fact, Facebook made the deal in order to get closer to their mobile users. The deal remarked by CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, as biggest ever in the history of world. Recently we all heard many things about the tie-up of WhatsApp and Facebook by newspapers, TV channels and of course on the Internet, the most popular tech topic. But there are some facts about the acquisition you must know. In this post I am going to share a list of six hot facts that you must know about the Facebook-WhatsApp deal. Have a look.

#1. Largest acquisition by Facebook :

Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion, which is the largest deal ever made by any tech company. Facebook is paying $4 billion in cash and $12 billion stock for the messaging service and it will grant an extra $3 billion worth of restricted stock units to WhatsApp's founders. Social networking giant, Facebook, is paying $42 per user with the deal dwarfing its own $33 per user cost of gaining instagram.

#2. Biggest deal than any Technology companies have ever made :

Facebook-WhatsApp acquisition is the biggest deal than any Microsoft, Apple and Google have ever made. Microsoft's biggest deal was the purchase of Skype for $8.5 billion, whereas Google had made its largest acquisition of Motorola Mobility at $12.5 billion. And talking about the Apple, it has never made a deal more than $1 billion. Since Time Warner's acquisition of AOL for $124 billion, the acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook is considered as one of the biggest deals ever made in IT industry.

#3. Google's Odd offer to WhatsApp :

Google made an offer to buy the world' largest instant messaging company, WhatsApp, for $10 billion before Facebook marked the deal for $19 billion. According to a report, Google's odd offer to WhatsApp was just to get notified whether WhatsApp has made any other acquisition. Google's so called offer to WhatsApp was a kind of negotiating tactic, which it applied to make an awareness of the potential startup acquisition.

#4. Informal talks went for over two years :

Informal talks between Facebook and WhatsApp had been continuing for two years. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and Jan Koum, the co-founder of WhatsApp, had a meet up in California in 2012. As per the reports, this meeting become the ground for sealing the deal between the companies. Moving to the other side, Jan Koum has a Ukrainian origin. He was brought up mostly in the Ukraine and moved to California during his teenage. There also an interesting thing is, Brain Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp applied for a job at Facebook and was rejected. After being rejected he wrote, " Facebook turned me down. It was great opportunity to work with some great people ".

#5. Break up Fee :

If Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp fails to obtain basic approvals the social networking site has to pay $2 billion. If merger agreement is terminated under certain circumstances mainly due to failure in gaining approvals, Facebook needs to pay WhatsApp $1 billion in cash.

#6. WhatsApp in Figures :

World's largest instant messaging company, WhatsApp, has 450 million monthly users and 72% of them are daily users. In addition to the 600 million photos and 100 million video messages daily there are 19 billion messages sent and 34 billion received through WhatsApp. First time in history, WhatsApp has crossed 450 million active users limit.

Hope you like the article. Have a happy social networking.