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February 20, 2014, 11:20 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 …
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The Verge, Fortune, CNNMoney.com, AllFacebook, TechCrunch, Engadget, ParisLemon, ZDNet, SiliconANGLE, InfoWorld, Gigaom, Uncrunched, Real Story Group Recent …, AllTwitter, Slate, The Next Web, USA Today, Bloomberg, Business Insider, memeburn, the rajam report, Tim Anderson's ITWriting, the Econsultancy blog, Tech in Asia, We Are Social, TechCrunch, I4U News, Ubergizmo, Salon, Phones Review, Forbes, Network World, WinBeta, BuzzFeed and Tech City News
| 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 — Exclusive: The Rags-To-Riches Tale Of How Jan Koum Built WhatsApp Into Facebook's New $19 Billion Baby — Jan Koum picked a meaningful spot to sign the $19 billion deal …
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Business Insider, Telegraph, SiliconBeat, stratechery, Android Authority, memeburn, Mobile Entertainment Feed and DealBook
Tweets: @charlesarthur, @forbestech, @anildash, @monkbent and @parislemon
| Jessi Hempel / Fortune: |
Google offered to buy WhatsApp for $10 billion — Facebook is buying WhatsApp for $19 billion, but it wasn't the only suitor. — My colleague Dan Primack has written a smart post on the numbers that weren't in the press release Facebook (FB) issued announcing it will acquire messaging service WhatsApp.
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AppleInsider, VentureBeat, 9to5Google, CNET, BGR, Business Insider, The Verge, DailyTech, The Droid Guy, bizjournals, WebProNews, Softpedia News, Business Cloud News and Cult of Mac. Tweets: @mims
| 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.
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Tech in Asia, Re/code, Bloomberg, DealBook, Guardian, Deadline.com, HBR.org, BBC, TechCrunch, Best Engaging Communities, NextBigWhat, Softpedia News, bizjournals, MoneyBeat, MediaNama, PE Hub Blog, Mashable and Digits
Tweets: @benedictevans, @sriramk, @mikeisaac, @panzer, @jimgoetz and @lucaslain
| 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 …
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The Verge, BGR, Forbes, Guardian, CNET, CrackBerry.com, The Next Web, Ubergizmo and TechCrunch
Tweets: @caseynewton, @ronp, @anildash, @martinvars, @fmanjoo and @me1000
| 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 … | 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.
| 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.
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Telegraph, Inside Facebook, ExtremeTech, TechCrunch, social media, Softpedia News and Quartz
Tweets: @nickbilton and @tedr
| 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: @fredwilson, @sfiegerman, @stevesi and @stevenlevy
| 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 …
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Business Insider, Re/code, Forbes, CNET and LiewCF Tech Blog
Tweets: @eileentso, @klustout, @irowan, @davechensky, @blakehounshell, @gallagherbilly and @madlid
| Zachary M. Seward / Quartz: |
| Amanda Lefebvre / Office Blogs: |
Office Web Apps rebranded as Office Online at Office.com — Introducing Office Online at Office.com — Today, you'll notice something new about Office.com and Office Web Apps-now officially called Office Online. An online version of the Office you know and trust has been available for quite a while … | Tim Culpan / Bloomberg: |
HTC to preview Qualcomm-based smartwatch to carriers next week, will not demo publicly — HTC Said to Plan Smartwatch Preview Amid Declining Market Share — HTC Corp. (2498), the Taiwanese smartphone maker struggling with sliding sales, plans to demonstrate the first of three wearable devices next week … | 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 Television that his company “had conversations” with Apple.
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VentureBeat, SiliconBeat, The Verge, Gotta Be Mobile, Business Insider, The Next Web, AppleInsider, Breaking Apple News …, Softpedia News, I4U News, bizjournals, Geek.com, Financial Post, 9to5Mac, iDownloadBlog.com …, Forbes, SlashGear, MacNN, CNET, iPhone Hacks and Ubergizmo. Tweets: @emilychangtv
| Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: |
How One Scammer Manipulated Apple's Top Charts To Earn Tens Of Thousands Daily Using A $10 GameSalad Template — Something fishy has been going on with Apple's App Store top charts. No, I'm not talking about “Flappy Bird” (well, maybe that too), but rather how on earth two different developers used …
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9to5Mac, iPhone in Canada Blog and iPhone Hacks
| 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.
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Yahoo Labs
| Aldrin Calimlim / App Advice: |
Venmo Now Lets You Pay People Near You With New AirDrop-Like Feature — Venmo, the popular mobile payments app developed by the eBay/PayPal company of the same name, has just debuted a new feature called Nearby Payments. — The new feature does exactly what its name says: it allows you to pay people near you.| Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch: |
Stealthy Security Company Apprity Raises $8 Million — The stealthy business security company Apprity, launched by two former Oracle employees, has raised $8 million in its first institutional financing. — For its first venture round, Apprity turned to seasoned security technology investors Promod Haque …
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PE Hub Blog and VatorNews
| Rachael King / Wall Street Journal: |
Nursing homes exposed to hacker attacks, risking privacy of medical records — Nursing Homes Are Exposed to Hacker Attacks — Cybersecurity Experts Find Trove of Information on File-Sharing Web Site — Computer-security researchers have discovered on a website documents …
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Los Angeles Times, Naked Security, Softpedia News, SiliconBeat, The Daily Caller and Security Watch. Tweets: @wsjd
| Gregg Keizer / Computerworld: |
Microsoft delivers stopgap defense against active IE10 attacks — Microsoft on Wednesday issued a stopgap defense that protects IE9 and IE10 against ongoing attacks until the company issues a patch, probably in three weeks. — Microsoft on Wednesday issued a stopgap defense …
| Lizette Chapman / Venture Capital Dispatch: |
Bringing Personal Coaching to the ‘Quantified Self,’ MyFitnessPal Acquires Sessions — In a move to make your smartphone also act as your doctor and coach, nutrition app MyFitnessPal Inc. has acquired Sessions Inc., maker of a personal coaching app. … MyFitnessPal offers …
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VentureBeat, Re/code, Co.Exist, VatorNews, Pulse 2.0, TechRepublic and TechCrunch
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