Techmeme: WhatsApp and Messenger serve different uses, Facebook will continue investing in both (Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook)

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February 20, 2014, 5:10 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 …

More: SEC, TechCrunch, The Verge, Re/code, The Next Web, ParisLemon, Slate, Tim Anderson's ITWriting, We Are Social, memeburn, Gigaom, Phones Review, BuzzFeed, BBC, Forbes, Uncrunched, Boing Boing, I4U News, Computerworld, the rajam report, VentureBeat, VatorNews, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Business Insider, WinBeta, Android Beat, Salon, The Droid Guy, Engadget, USA Today, TechnoBuffalo, Entrepreneur, NEWS.com.au, bizjournals, Phandroid, AdExchanger, 9to5Mac, UnleashThePhones, CrackBerry.com, ITworld.com, Guardian, SlashGear, Pocketnow, Network World, The Register and POPSUGAR

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: MoneyBeat, Re/code, PE Hub Blog, TechCrunch, Mashable, RealityPrime, Deadline.com, NextBigWhat, Venture Capital Dispatch, Business Insider, bizjournals and GeekWire

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

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: The Verge, CNET, Ubergizmo, AmongTech, PC Magazine, Gigaom, TechCrunch, Inc.com and Wired.co.uk

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

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

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: Softpedia News, Digits, social media, Mashable, Financial Post, BetaNews, MacRumors, Techly, Boing Boing and TheHill

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, PC World, Re/code, Forrester Blogs, Global Tech, VatorNews, eWeek, NEWS.com.au, The Information, Gizmodo, Business Insider, Fortune, WMPoweruser, The Switch and San Francisco Chronicle

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, Business Insider and USA Today. Tweets: @dmanduzio

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: LiewCF Tech Blog, CNET, Forbes and Business Insider

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

Benedict Evans:

WhatsApp's acquisition illustrates most of the key trends in consumer tech today — Whatsapp and $19bn — Facebook just bought WhatsApp, paying $16bn in cash and stock and $3bn in RSUs. WhatsApp has 450m active users, of which 72% are active every day. It has just 32 engineers.

Tweets: @sfiegerman and @stevesi

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 …

Tweets: @howardlindzon

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: @anerishah99 and @rsarver

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: TechCrunch, Valleywag, MoneyBeat, USA Today, MediaNama, bizjournals, The Week, BIA/Kelsey, Quartz, TIME, TechnoBuffalo and Business Insider

Zachary M. Seward / Quartz:

WhatsApp's anti-ad philosophy is really a broad new vision for mobile — WhatsApp has vowed never to sell ads. It collects no information about users beyond their phone numbers. So you're right to wonder why it was just acquired by the world's second-largest mobile advertising company.

More: DealBook, Mashable, Business Insider and blog.chron.com. Tweets: @zseward

Dan Primack / Fortune:

35% of Facebook's cash is being used for the WhatsApp deal; Sequoia to make 3.5B from its $60M investment

More: StrictlyVC, Business Insider and Ubergizmo. Tweets: @stevecheney

Nicholas Carlson / Business Insider:

Zuckerberg reached out to Koum in 2012, and proposed the deal at dinner at his home this February

More: Bloomberg, The Technology Chronicles and BuzzFeed

Tweets: @piercedavid and @bensign

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

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

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 and BGR

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 Verge, iDownloadBlog.com …, CNET, The Next Web, MacNN, AppleInsider, Ubergizmo and iPhone Hacks. Tweets: @emilychangtv

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

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, BBC, GeekWire, ZDNet, PhoneArena and Los Angeles Times

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

Josh Lowensohn / The Verge:

Google I/O is back June 25-26 and you'll need to win a lottery to attend — Google just announced dates for its annual I/O developers conference, an event that has typically brought new products and updates to other services. This year's conference will be held from June 25-26 …

More: Sundar Pichai, Phones Review, 9to5Google, Android Central, Pocketnow, Redmond Pie, ReadWrite, Android Beat, Gotta Be Mobile, iDownloadBlog.com …, Phandroid, TechCrunch, ZDNet and Droid Life

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: Federal Eye, The Verge and Engadget

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