Tag: acquired

Facebook Acquires WhatsApp for $19 Billion: Facts

$19 Billion for a messaging service? That’s lot expensive, isn’t it? Lets look what Facebook got out of the deal.

Facebook-Like-Whatsapp

WhatsApp Facts
Jan Koum and Brian Acton are the co-founders of the company.
Jan and Brian were previously working at Yahoo.
Brian was Jan’s mentor at Yahoo.
Jan Koum, CEO of Whatsapp is now one of Facebook’s board member and partner with Mark to shape Facebook’s future as well as WhatsApp’s.
Whatsapp has 450 million active users. At least a million install and join Whatsapp each day.
Whatsapp has at least 72% of daily active users – which is a lot when compared to industry standards, which is 10% to 20%.
Whatsapp has only 32 engineers.
Whatsapp was free to download, install and use for 1 year. After that you had to pay $1 for a year.

$19 = $4 + $12 + $3
Whatsapp was acquired for $19 Billion – $4 billion in cash and approximately $12 billion worth of Facebook shares. And additional $3 billion in restricted stock units to be granted to WhatsApp’s founders and employees that will vest over four years subsequent to closing.

Do you think $19 Billion is Justifiable ?
I don’t think Whatsapp can be evaluated to $19 Billion in any ways. But Whatsapp sure helps in Facebook’s mission to make the web open and to connect as many people as possible. Whatsapp has the potential to connect Billions of people. In few years whatsapp can have 3 to 4 Billion active users – according to it’s growth rate. Throwing ads on 3 – 4 Billion people would be foolish, so they might come up with some innovative monetization strategies too. I only wish they don’t sell user data 😛 – Till now Whatsapp had no idea about users age, gender etc, except the mobile number. But now if you use same mobile number even on Facebook, imagine what all they can know about you 😉 I wish whatsapp, Facebook and all their users(including me) all the best for the future!

Facebook has said to continue to maintain Whatsapps principles: No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!

Funny thing is, Brian was looking for a job 4 years back:

Recruiters

Twitter

Facebook!

Now he must be thanking all the people who said NO to him. Without them, this glorious day might not have come 😛

“It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the BEST, you very often get it.” – William Somerset Maugham

New email domains for Yahoo! – Ymail and Rocketmail

Yahoo! Inc.Today is a celebration day…..atleast at Yahoo Inc.As they have just announced their two new email domains Ymail.com and Rocketmail.com.

Launched in October 1997, Yahoo! mail claims more than 260 million users worldwide, as a result of which many desirable e-mail addresses have already been taken for the yahoo.com( and yahoo.co.in or yahoo.co.uk or yahoo.co.au etc) domain.With the introduction of two new email domain choices, Yahoo! is will make millions of new email addresses available to the online community.

Ymail is expected to compete directly with Gmail of Google.
Rocketmail is rather a old email domain, and at one time was one of the most widely used and a fast webmail services which was regarded as an rival for Hotmail. Yahoo acquired Rocketmail.com in 1997 and used its technology as the foundation of its Yahoo Mail. After the Yahoo! acquisition of rocketmail , no new Rocketmail.com email addresses could be registered.But the earlier users were left to use and retain their email addresses.

Now we can register for any/all these 3 mail domains with our favorite ID names.

Many have tried to register for ymail or rocketmail by going to ymail.com and/or rocketmail.com(but it redirects to the same old yahoo login page.

Then how to register ?

Relax, just goto the same login.yahoo.com page and click on the signup now link.You will then be taken to the regular registration page.There you can select your email ID as well as the email domain.

ymail-rocketmail-technotip

A common Yahoo! ID will work for everything across the Yahoo! network, from checking email to checking out Messenger, Flickr, groups, finance, MyBlogLog and the rest hundreds of yahoo acquired sites and services.

The new mail domain comes with:-
ymail-login-page

  • Easily transition contacts and emails from other mail accounts with a handy wizard.
  • The @ymail.com and @rocketmail.com addresses deliver all the great features you love about Yahoo!
  • Find the @ymail.com or @rocketmail.com email address that’s you always wanted and was unavailable.

However you cannot change your current email address to the new ymail.com or rocketmail.com email address.

“A happy user is one that stays around and is a Yahoo! user for life,” Kremer Vice President, Yahoo! Mail, said.

NOTE: To login using your ymail or rocketmail ID’s, just open yahoomail.com and then type your full email ID( Ex:- technotip@ymail.com) and then enter your password(in password field) and then hit Signin, this will take you to the new ymail or rocketmail.

“If you have an email address that is your name at ymail, that becomes part of your identity.”

We already grabbed out technotip@ymail.com. What about you guys ?