

Facebook Massively Overpaid for WhatsApp - peter123
http://continuations.com/post/77698925932/facebook-massively-overpaid-for-whatsapp#comment-1260570571

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onion2k
_They could have promoted their version via Facebook itself and then spend a
“cool” billion or two on advertising this globally and /or incentivizing
installs._

Assuming a $2b ad spend matched by $2b of internal Facebook promotion value,
that'd give an user acquisition budget of around $8 per user. If the author
thinks that'd be enough to tempt the majority of Whatsapp users to use a
Facebook equivalent then he's grossly underestimated the value people put on
Whatsapp - more specifically, the value in fact it wasn't Facebook. Facebook
would have needed to spend _a lot_ to overcome that.

I have no doubt that someone at Facebook ran the numbers and realised it'd be
cheaper to simply buy the opposition. I actually think Facebook would have
paid a good bit more than they did.

