Facebook might acquire Whatsapp
Social Networking Company Facebook interested to buy Whatsapp sources tell TechCrunch.
WhatsApp Messenger is a cross-platform mobile messaging app which allows you to
exchange messages without having to pay for SMS.
As of now, WhatsApp users on iOS will need to pay a fee of Rs 55 to use the service.
Android users can use it for free for the first year, after which they would be
required to pay Rs 55 per year. Google stated that WhatsApp has had between 100
million and 500 million installations till date. Facebook has already launched a
dedicated app for its messaging client.
Unlike Facebook, Whatsapp is a paid app. And obviously, having a paid, ad-free
service is an expansion of Facebook’s business model beyond advertising. We’ve
already seen Facebook launch another service that diversifies it — Gifts — and the
positive impact that had with investors.
At the end of October 2011, the last time Whatsapp updated its usage numbers, it
announced that it was serving 1 billion messages per day — “Just how much is 1
billion messages? That is 41,666,667 messages an hour, 694,444 messages a minute, and
11,574 messages a second,” the company wrote in a blog post at the time.
Whatsapp is currently looking for translators in Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Farsi,
Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian,
Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Simplified
Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Urdu, “and many more
languages.”