$19BN BUYOUT OF WHATSAPP A GOOD BARGAIN – ZUCKERBERG

Facebook-whatsappBy Oriade Ayomide

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg has defended Facebook’s $19bn (£11.4bn) takeover of messaging service WhatsApp saying the deal is really worth more.

Zuckerberg, who stated this while answering questions from technology journalists at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, said: “I just think that by itself it is worth more than $19bn. I mean it is hard to exactly make that speech today because they have so little revenue compared to that number.

“But the reality is that there are very few services that reach a billion people in the world. They are all incredibly valuable, much more valuable than that. I could be wrong. This could be the one service that gets to a billion people and ends up not being that valuable. I don’t think I am.”

It was revealed earlier at the show that WhatsApp – which boasts 450 million users – will add voice calls to its messaging service within the next four months.