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February 20, 2014, 1:45 PM
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| 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, Engadget, BGR, VentureBeat, CNET, iPhone in Canada Blog, TechnoBuffalo, TechSpot, 9to5Google, Business Insider, SlashGear, The Verge, DailyTech, The Droid Guy, Business Cloud News and Softpedia News. Tweets: @mims
| 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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Gigaom, The Verge, Re/code, New Yorker, CNNMoney.com, SiliconANGLE, Fortune, BGR, AllFacebook, TechHive, ParisLemon, SlashGear, Nextgov, Android Beat, Ubergizmo, Pretzel Logic, The Next Web, Internet Evolution, Slate, Uncrunched, ZDNet, Business Insider, memeburn, the Econsultancy blog, Tech in Asia, Bloomberg, Real Story Group Recent …, We Are Social and AllTwitter
| 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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GeekWire, Business Insider, stratechery, Telegraph, SiliconBeat, Mobile Entertainment Feed, memeburn, Android Authority and DealBook
Tweets: @steveforbesceo, @fmanjoo, @charlesarthur, @anildash, @forbestech and @monkbent
| 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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Washington Post, Business Insider, Bloomberg, Re/code, Tech in Asia, MoneyBeat, Global Nerdy, DealBook, Deadline.com, BBC, Guardian, TechCrunch, Digits, NextBigWhat and Best Engaging Communities
Tweets: @jimgoetz, @mikeisaac, @sriramk, @panzer and @benedictevans
| 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.
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Slate, Guardian, Forbes and The Next Web
| 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.
| 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:
Los Angeles Times
| 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, Computerworld, BGR, Forbes, hypebot, The Mac Observer, CNET, Guardian, Ubergizmo and CrackBerry.com
Tweets: @me1000, @caseynewton, @martinvars, @ronp, @anildash and @fmanjoo
| David Rowan / Wired.co.uk: |
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Forbes, Business Insider, Ars Technica, Entrepreneur, CNET and Re/code
Tweets: @eileentso and @irowan
| Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook: |
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iMore, Telegraph, FierceWireless, Inside Facebook, ExtremeTech, Techly and Softpedia News
Tweets: @nickbilton and @tedr
| 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 … | Devindra Hardawar / VentureBeat: |
Online bank Simple acquired by Spain's BBVA for $117M — will focus on international growth — Nobody expected this Spanish banking acquisition. — Simple, the online bank devoted to offering a more humane alternative to traditional banking, announced today that it's being acquired …
More:
The Verge, Simple, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, The Next Web, Oregonian, Android Community and Mashable. Tweets: @marshallk
| 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 …
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Business Insider, LAPTOP Magazine, Computerworld, BGR, MobileBurn.com, TechSpot, Gotta Be Mobile, Droid Life, The Droid Guy, VentureBeat, Pocketnow, TechnoBuffalo, Engadget, Gigaom, DailyTech, CNET, TechCrunch, Phones Review, SlashGear, Gizmodo, Ubergizmo, Electronista, The Verge and The Next Web
| Om Malik / Gigaom: |
Om Malik leaves day-to-day operations at GigaOm, becomes full partner at True Ventures, site raises $8M more — Now that Gigaom is all grown up, it's time for the next chapter — It's a new year (although it's well underway) and I'm excited to talk about the new phase at Gigaom.| Eric Slivka / MacRumors: |
Fleksy's Predictive Touch Keyboard with Gestures Now Available to All iOS Developers — Back in December, Fleksy announced a toolkit to allow iOS developers to incorporate the company's popular predictive and gesture-based keyboard into their apps. The initial testing period involved …
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9to5Mac, The Next Web, Ars Technica, TechCrunch, Gigaom, Engadget, iPhone in Canada Blog and MacStories
| Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: |
Acompli Raises $7.3M Series A From Redpoint & Others To Fix Mobile Email — Acompli, a company building a mobile email application which functions as an all-in-one productivity app for iPhone, has raised $7.3 million in Series A funding - a sizable investment that points to the scale of the problem the startup is aiming to solve.| 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 …
More:
PE Hub Blog
| 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 …
More:
Macworld, iPhone in Canada Blog, 9to5Mac and iPhone Hacks
| 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.| 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:
Search Engine Land and Yahoo Labs
| 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 …
More:
Los Angeles Times, Naked Security, Softpedia News, SiliconBeat, The Daily Caller and Security Watch. Tweets: @wsjd
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