Facebook Inc.

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#41
Not sure if this has been posted but I was certainly taken aback by a few facets of what's happening

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26266689

1) although the deal is valued at 19bio, the details comprise of 4bn in cash and approximately $12bn-worth of Facebook shares, plus an additional $3bn in stock to WhatsApp's founders and employees at a later date. So essentially it was issuing facebook paper to purchase whatsapp paper. A case of inflated paper to buy inflated paper?

2) In the meantime, Nasdaq is now at 14y high since the techcom bubble pop.

Mobile is interesting for sure but .... I'll stay clear.
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#42
(25-02-2014, 10:10 AM)AlphaQuant Wrote: Not sure if this has been posted but I was certainly taken aback by a few facets of what's happening

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26266689

1) although the deal is valued at 19bio, the details comprise of 4bn in cash and approximately $12bn-worth of Facebook shares, plus an additional $3bn in stock to WhatsApp's founders and employees at a later date. So essentially it was issuing facebook paper to purchase whatsapp paper. A case of inflated paper to buy inflated paper?

2) In the meantime, Nasdaq is now at 14y high since the techcom bubble pop.

Mobile is interesting for sure but .... I'll stay clear.

I merge your post into Facebook thread. The news has been posted, but this post added value to it.

I agree, the tech bubble seems starting to brew. I will also stay away from it, while better bargain available elsewhere.
“夏则资皮,冬则资纱,旱则资船,水则资车” - 范蠡
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#43
http://recode.net/2014/02/24/why-whatsap...be-afraid/

Why WhatsApp Is Worth $19 Billion, and Why the Telecom Industry Should Be Afraid
February 24, 2014, 11:30 AM PST
By Andrew Busey, CEO and Co-Founder, Team Chaos

The past week in tech news has been dominated by Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp for $19 billion ($16 billion + $3 billion retention). Many articles, comments and tweets reference the dot-com bubble and desperation, and are generally negative. But they’re dead wrong.

Messaging is an important part of how people use the Internet. It is an even more important part of how people use their phones. As telecom competition heats up while people make fewer actual phone calls, the telecom companies have attempted to claw more money from their subscribers via increased data and SMS pricing. It’s a frustrating and losing position, especially as alternatives have gained traction.

WhatsApp, like Apple’s Messages, effectively moves SMS from telecom networks to the Internet, where it is transport agnostic — it can run over 3G, 4G, LTE, Wi-Fi or anything else that can get a basic Internet connection, even a bad one. This is critical, and it is a big part of why WhatsApp is growing so fast and has such a broad international footprint.

In terms of SMS messaging, WhatsApp is already as large as half of all global texting traffic. This means that SMS, the fastest growing telecom application (as opposed to straight transport) is about to be overtaken by a third-party app. With a team of about 50 people in four years — welcome to the new world order.

Essentially, Facebook just bought the future of mobile messaging — the next-generation SMS replacement — for 10 percent of the market cap of AT&T, five percent of Verizon, half the cost of Orange, 75 percent of the price of T-Mobile. That should scare the crap out of every telecom company (or even cable, for that matter) in every part of the world. Apple and the app economy it started has now turned them all into transport networks with little or soon-to-be no actual application value.

What Facebook understands, and why the precedent-setting $19 billion figure should seem like a smart if aggressive buy, is that in five years or less, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, et al, will be relegated to networks that no one cares about, other than how fast and how reliable of an Internet connection they can deliver.

And this will also happen to the cable companies. The only thing people hate more than telecom companies is cable companies. Right now, cable companies are doing everything they can to bundle content and lock in customers — just like the telecoms. Comcast just announced plans to buy Time Warner Cable (which is just the cable service, not the media company) to grow its subscriber base and to get more “pipes.” However, Google Fiber and the telecom companies (AT&T, Verizon) will, of course, fight them.

In the short term, all of these players will look the same, even Google Fiber, with cable TV bundles that look like they currently do. However, Netflix and Amazon Prime are leading the charge with “apps” that unbundle the use of the pipes from the content. Sony and Microsoft are building business models around their consoles. And others — both startups and large companies — will continue to push down this path. The very disruption that WhatsApp brought to SMS and that threatens telecoms is also currently being forged in the cable industry.

WhatsApp shows that the power of an app and its associated infrastructure can, for a very low cost and in a relatively short period of time, completely disrupt what many believed was an unassailable piece of a powerful telecom market.

Andrew Busey has pioneered some of the industry’s most important Web technologies — including work on Mosaic, the first Web browser (now part of Microsoft Internet Explorer); creating iChat, the first Web-based chat system and one of the first instant messaging applications; and building WebCenter, the first major Web-based customer service technology (now part of Avaya). He is currently CEO and co-founder of Team Chaos, partner at Chaotic Moon, and is developing Banter, an anonymous social chat network. Reach him @andrewbusey.
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#44
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/m...uying.html

When the CEO does not have the shareholders' interest in mind, we should avoid investing in that company. For Facebook, it's worse considering that the shareholders cannot do anything about it, since Mark Zuckerberg has absolute control and doesn't want to or even have to answer to anyone.
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#45
I have a silly question.

How does whatsapp makes money when the app is free and there is no advertisement fees to collect?
life goes in cycles, predictable yet uncontrollable; just like the markets, but markets give you a second chance
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#46
(27-02-2014, 08:43 AM)Greenrookie Wrote: I have a silly question.

How does whatsapp makes money when the app is free and there is no advertisement fees to collect?

back to 2000 dotcom valuation of 'eyeballs'.
"... but quitting while you're ahead is not the same as quitting." - Quote from the movie American Gangster
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#47
(27-02-2014, 08:43 AM)Greenrookie Wrote: I have a silly question.

How does whatsapp makes money when the app is free and there is no advertisement fees to collect?

Greenrookie, whatsapp is only free for the first year. After that user has to pay 99 cents (if i'm not mistaken) subscription fee every year to continue using it. Subscription fee will certainly go up in the future as they release new features.

I would also argue that the 'no advertisement' rule will change sometime in the future.

(currently not vested in facebook)
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#48
Rather I see a war brewing between the telcos and OTT networks like WhatsApp. And FB will not have its way so easily

http://www.zdnet.com/sg/what-telcos-angs...000026790/
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#49
Interesting. Google is using balloons, and facebook is using drones. Which one is more economical? I will vote for Google's balloons...

Facebook in talks to acquire drone company for US$60m: reports
05 Mar 2014 06:01
[SAN FRANCISCO] Facebook Inc is in talks to buy drone maker Titan Aerospace for US$60 million, according to media reports.

The high-flying drones would give Facebook, the world's No 1 Internet social network, the ability to beam wireless Internet access to consumers in undeveloped parts of the world, according to the technology blog TechCrunch, which first reported the deal late on Monday citing an anonymous source.

The effort would help advance Facebook's Internet.org effort, which aims to connect billions of people who do not currently have Internet access.

Facebook declined to comment. Titan Aerospace did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Titan is developing a variety of solar-powered "atmospheric satellites" according to the company's website, with initial commercial operations slated for 2015. - Reuters

Ref: Business Times Breaking News
“夏则资皮,冬则资纱,旱则资船,水则资车” - 范蠡
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#50
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2014/03/12/ca...-memeoirs/

You can now make a book out of all your Facebook messages with Memeoirs
By BEN WOODS, 15 hours ago

Memeoirs, the service that lets you create a book out of all your old emails, has launched a new feature that integrates messages sent across Facebook.

The feature was announced today by the company, although it has been live on the home page for a few days. Picking up where the previous incarnation left off, it now lets you turn your private Facebook messages into an entire book, should you so wish.

To achieve this, all you need to do is connect your Facebook account to the service, select who you talked to that you’d like included in your book, set the time period it should cover and select a custom cover. That’s it.

[Image: Memeoirs-open-Modern-layout-730x486.jpg]

“Memeoirs does all the downloading, filtering and displaying of the content for you. You’ll be able to see a preview that matches what your book will be like once it’s shipped to your doorstep, in a single copy, made exclusively for you,” the company said in a statement.

It’s by no means the first time that we’ve come across a service that turns your social updates into a hard copy book – Book Of Fame used to do the same for Facebook status messages – but it’s the first that we’ve come across one that takes your private messages and transforms them into real paper.

Whether or not there’s a huge demand for services like this remains to be seen. There’s not too many of my Facebook conversations I’d like to see preserved forever in book form, but maybe you’ve had your most interesting chats while travelling or simply want to preserve conversations with friends and family. Nonetheless, while other companies have tried similar things, that’s not necessarily an endorsement for success; Book Of Fame’s website is no more and now redirects to LifeLabs.de, an equally sparse resource.

http://www.memeoirs.com/
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