Mark's on a global mission
Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have been making the industry headlines in the past week or so. Firstly, they splashed out and eye watering $19 billion for WhatsApp and then the cover talked global domination at this years Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Although WhatsApp has 450 million worldwide users and was expanding that total at a rapid rate, still plenty of users have not heard of it. Yet more, on hearing that it was a mobile phone messaging App, concluded that they already had messaging on their phones as part of their contract bundle, and have no need of it. However, whilst WhatsApp started out as a straight text messaging service, it now allows photos, audio and video clips to be sent alongside the text. It also allows group chat, not possible with SMS text messaging.
The big plus point is that it is a low-cost approach to messaging especially for international contacts. That leads us to Zuckerberg's speech in Spain.
He not only said that he paid less for WhatsApp than it was worth the Facebook, he talks of a mission to use mobiles, Facebook and WhatsApp to get people across the world today who do not have the Internet. In other words, low-cost connectivity is the key to winning more Facebook users worldwide.
While, WhatsApp CEO, Jan Koum, used the Barcelona show to announce plans to add voice calling over the Internet to the app. Suddenly, Facebook is looking resurgent. It appears to have gone from stale to stellar in just two weeks.
Mind you, the stakes are high, as nearly 20 billion bucks will take a lot of paying back!
