Techmeme: Facebook to acquire WhatsApp for $4B cash, $12B in Facebook shares, and $3B in restricted stock units, CEO Koum to join Facebook's Board (Facebook)

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February 20, 2014, 1:00 AM

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Facebook:

Facebook to acquire WhatsApp for $4B cash, $12B in Facebook shares, and $3B in restricted stock units, CEO Koum to join Facebook's Board — Facebook to Acquire WhatsApp — Facebook today announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire WhatsApp, a rapidly growing cross …

Jim Goetz / Sequoia Capital:

WhatsApp in numbers: 450M active users, 32 engineers, $0 in marketing, and only $1/year to use — Four Numbers That Explain Why Facebook Acquired WhatsApp — WhatsApp Co-Founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton — Earlier today, Facebook announced its acquisition of WhatsApp for $16 billion.

More: Re/code, Mashable, MoneyBeat, ParisLemon, PE Hub Blog, Digits, GeekWire, TechCrunch, Venture Capital Dispatch, MediaNama, RealityPrime, Business Insider and Deadline.com

Tweets: @lucaslain, @jason, @om, @benedictevans, @sriramk, @mikeisaac, @panzer and @sequoia_capital

Jan Koum / WhatsApp Blog:

WhatsApp says it will remain autonomous and nothing will change for users — Facebook — Almost five years ago we started WhatsApp with a simple mission: building a cool product used globally by everybody. Nothing else mattered to us. — Today we are announcing a partnership …

More: CNET, The Verge, Gigaom, AmongTech, PC Magazine, Cult of Mac, TechCrunch and Inc.com

Tweets: @caseynewton, @ronp, @anildash, @martinvars, @fmanjoo, @tim, @me1000, @benedictevans and @anthonyha

Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook:

WhatsApp and Messenger serve different uses, Facebook will continue investing in both — I'm excited to announce that we've agreed to acquire WhatsApp and that their entire team will be joining us at Facebook. — Our mission is to make the world more open and connected.

More: BetaNews, social media, Digits, Mashable, MacRumors, Financial Post, Techly and Boing Boing

Tweets: @nickbilton, @7im and @tedr

TechCrunch:

Why Facebook Dropped $19B On Whatsapp: Reach Into Europe, Emerging Markets — With 450 million monthly users and a million more signing up each day, WhatsApp was just too far ahead in the international mobile messaging race for Facebook Messenger to catch up as you can see in the 2013 chart above.

More: Wall Street Journal, Global Tech, NEWS.com.au, San Francisco Chronicle, Re/code, The Information, Forbes, The Switch, Fortune, VatorNews, eWeek, Business Insider and Gizmodo

David Rowan / Wired.co.uk:

WhatsApp: The inside story — When he was living on welfare, Jan Koum's family collected food stamps a couple of blocks from the unmarked Mountain View office that now houses his messaging company, WhatsApp. An émigré at 16 from Communist Ukraine — where phones were routinely tapped …

More: CNET, Business Insider and Forbes

Tweets: @davechensky, @blakehounshell, @madlid, @paulballen, @jyarow, @me1000, @irowan, @irowan and @gallagherbilly

Parmy Olson / Forbes:

Jan Koum's rag-to-riches tale, which ended with him signing the WhatsApp deal on the door of his former welfare office — How Jan Koum Built WhatsApp Into Facebook's New $19 Billion Baby — Jan Koum picked a meaningful spot to sign the $19 billion deal to sell his company WhatsApp to Facebook earlier today.

Thanks:@rmac18

Amir Efrati / The Information:

Google offered to pay WhatsApp to notify them of any acquisition talks, but was rebuffed — Google's Unusual Offer to WhatsApp — More than six months ago, Google approached WhatsApp with an odd offer: It would pay the mobile messaging startup in exchange for the right to be notified …

More: AndroidOS.in

Sarah Lacy / PandoDaily:

WhatsApp processes 500M images/day compared to Snapchat's 400M, Facebooks's 350M, and Instagram's 55M — Follow the photos: The real reason Facebook just paid almost 10% of its market cap for WhatsApp — So you thought $1 billion for Instagram was crazy. — And then you thought $3 billion for Snapchat was insane.

More: MoneyBeat, Computerworld, Digits, USA Today, Business Insider and TechCrunch. Tweets: @dmanduzio

Nicholas Carlson / Business Insider:

Zuckerberg reached out to Koum in 2012, and proposed the deal at dinner at his home this February — The Inside Story Of How Facebook Bought WhatsApp For $19 Billion — Today Facebook announced that it acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion. — It was a deal two years in the making, according to a source close to the situation.

More: The Technology Chronicles, BuzzFeed and Bloomberg

Tweets: @piercedavid and @bensign

Zoran Basich / Venture Capital Dispatch:

Facebook's $19 Billion WhatsApp Acquisition Is Largest Ever for Venture-Backed Company — Facebook's acquisition of mobile-messaging company WhatsApp for about $19 billion is the largest deal ever for a venture-capital-backed startup. … The deal tops US West Media's acquisition …

More: Quartz, Valleywag, USA Today, MoneyBeat, BIA/Kelsey, TIME, The Week, Business Insider and Forbes. Tweets: @carlosdomingo

Dan Primack / Fortune:

35% of Facebook's cash is being used for the WhatsApp deal; Sequoia to make 3.5B from its $60M investment — Facebook-WhatsApp: The other numbers — Facebook is buying WhatsApp for $19 billion. But that's not the only important number. — FORTUNE — Like many of you …

More: TechCrunch and Ubergizmo. Tweets: @stevecheney

Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:

WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton's tweets show he tried unsuccessfully to work at Facebook and Twitter in 2009 — How Things Change — Four years ago, Brian Acton was looking for a job. — His job at Yahoo, where he'd filled many engineering roles over 11 years, had come to an end.

More: Forbes, Business Insider and The Next Web

Tweets: @rsarver and @anerishah99

Benedict Evans:

WhatsApp's acquisition illustrates most of the key trends in consumer tech today

Tweets: @stevesi and @sfiegerman

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Facebook Stock Falls 5% After Hours Following WhatsApp Purchase [Update: Now Down Only 2.64%]

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

Google Fiber chooses nine metro areas for possible expansion — Google Fiber is ready to expand, as Google has identified nine metro areas scattered around the country as possible sites of deployment, the company said. — “We've invited 34 cities in nine metro areas across the US to work …

Juli Clover / MacRumors:

Tesla CEO Confirms ‘Conversations’ With Apple, Says Any Acquisition ‘Very Unlikely’ — Following a report earlier this week suggesting Apple had considered purchasing Tesla, Tesla CEO Elon Musk today confirmed in an interview with Bloomberg that his company “had conversations” with Apple.

More: The Next Web, AppleInsider, MacNN, iPhone Hacks and Ubergizmo

Rich McCormick / The Verge:

T-Mobile offers $250 to upgrading BlackBerry users after manufacturer and fan outrage — Carrier also offers $200 to upgrade to from BlackBerry to another manufacturer's phone — BlackBerry users on T-Mobile who want to upgrade will now receive $250 towards any BlackBerry phone …

More: multimediacapsule …, Los Angeles Times, Engadget, TechnoBuffalo, Re/code, GeekWire, Ubergizmo, CrackBerry.com, CNET, TmoNews, BerryReview and MobileSyrup.com

Tweets: @johnlegere and @applespotlight

Nathan Ingraham / The Verge:

BlackBerry's CEO is ‘outraged’ by T-Mobile's attempts to convert its customers to the iPhone

More: Inside BlackBerry, CrackBerry.com, eWeek, BBC, GeekWire, PhoneArena, Los Angeles Times, ZDNet, CNNMoney.com and SlashGear

Tom Simonite / MIT Technology Review:

Yahoo Launches $10 Million Research Effort to Invent a Smarter Siri — Academics at CMU will try to extend Yahoo's services with mobile apps that act like personal assistants. — Yahoo's future mobile apps could come with a dash of intelligence that lets them act like personal assistants.

More: Yahoo Labs

Nathaniel Popper / DealBook:

Winklevoss brothers launch new Bitcoin price index called Winkdex as their Bitcoin Trust moves closer to regulatory approval — Winklevoss Brothers Offer an Index to Track Price of Bitcoin — Stock traders have the Standard & Poor's 500. Bitcoin bettors will have the Winkdex.

More: Gigaom. Tweets: @kashhill, @delrey and @winklevoss

Washington Post:

DHS cancels national license plate tracking plan — Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday ordered the cancelation of a plan by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to develop a national license plate tracking system after privacy advocates raised concern about the initiative.

More: Engadget and The Verge

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

FCC won't appeal Verizon ruling, will regulate 'Net on “case-by-case basis” — The Federal Communications Commission will not appeal a court ruling that overturned the FCC's anti-blocking and anti-discrimination rules, Chairman Tom Wheeler announced today. Instead of trying to reinstate rules …

More: eWeek, VentureBeat, The Verge and GamePolitics blogs. See also Mediagazer

Jeff John Roberts / Gigaom:

Wheeler unveils new proposed rules for network neutrality, will try to stop “improper blocking”

More: New York Times, Techdirt, Reuters, Law Blog, San Francisco Chronicle, The Switch, Re/code, Wall Street Journal, Digital Trends, Policy Blog, SiliconANGLE, Gigaom Research, PandoDaily, PC World and Center for Democracy …

Tweets: @samgustin, @brendansasso and @eggerton

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