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As others said before, it's most likely a defensive move, against other interested parties but also against Whatsapp itself. I don't use and thoroughly dislike
by sveme 13y ago
As others said before, it's most likely a defensive move, against other interested parties but also against Whatsapp itself. I don't use and thoroughly dislike Facebook but I'm using Whatsapp groups daily with my closest friends and my climbing mates. In that sense Whatsapp has started to move beyond SMS and towards the social network market.
With such a large user base and their established mobile presence it would have been fairly easy to challenge Facebook in the social network field, so Zuckerberg might have seen that coming as well. In that light the announcement that Whatsapp will basically stay the same actually makes sense - it will stay the same and will not develop those features that could have threatened Facebook in the long term.
Well, I already sent some messages to my friends to move on to threema, which has the added benefit of having encrypted messaging and being located in Switzerland.
- amirmc 13y ago> "... it will stay the same and will not develop those features that could have threatened Facebook in the long term." That's fascinating and completely believable. The question will be can FB move those people to their own platform in the future and quietly retire Whatsapp in the future. It's interesting that the CEO of Whatsapp is joining the FB board since that will affect the direction both products take.
- dba7dba 13y agoCEO of Whatsapp prided on not listening in private conversation or collecting personal data, which Facebook ACTIVELY does.
- yapcguy 13y agoThe CEO just had a higher price than most other people. To get $16bn cash from Facebook is hilarious. Next time a start-up says they won't pay you market rate because of x, y, and z just walk away and laugh. For the sake of a few thousand dollars in wages, you could make them billions. Don't work for cheap bastards. Funny how engineers are supposed to sacrifice yet we never see a lawyer or accountant charge below market rates, and their work can save businesses millions as well as jail-time.
- curun1r 13y agoWhatsApp is actually the reason why people accept less than market rate from startups. No WhatsApp employee who's been there more than a year will ever need to work again once he/she survives the "golden handcuffs" period.
- yapcguy 13y agoI'm sure that's what Zynga employees thought too. Sure, accept less than your market rate, but there are lots of trapdoors before the cash ends up in your bank account.
- michaelmior 13y agoI think it's quite rare that any individual employee (probably excluding founders) is responsible for a significant percentage of the value of a company.
- DerpDerpDerp 13y agoI mean, if you assume only 10% of that value is going to employees, then you need only half a percent (0.5%) of that to get a $800k bonus. If you've only been there 2-3 years, that's a substantial bonus that pushes your pay above market rate.
- harryh 13y agoYou dropped a zero. 16B * 10% * .5% = 8 Million
- mkhalil 13y agoAnd they only have 55 employees...
- DerpDerpDerp 13y agoYou are correct; I had actually meant 0.05%.