You mean the same app that is used each single day by hundreds of millions?expect ads or a paid version at some point but to be clear 19bn was paid for the user base not a piece of software
Linkedin is big in India, used as a platform to get new IT-jobs and to have some sort of trust by social networking in a country where trust is hard to come by. Aquisitions are not bad in and of themselves. Depends what one makes of it.
No they are not, but when the company pays a 50%+ premium over the stock price then that is stuffing investors with an acquisition that they could have had much cheaper. Market practice even for high tech firms is a premium of 20-30%. Microsoft hopelessly over-offered and I believe the reason is panic in upper management to be rejected again should they have offered less. So, their own fear got in the way rather than keeping a cool head and simply walking away from a deal should the to be acquired firm reject such offer. It makes no sense.
If Microsoft had just a bit more time to wait they could have picked up linkedin for less than $25 a share.
Talking about the user base....yea there might be a billion people who have the app but how many people ACTUALLY use it....and all this talk about ads ads ads. It's 2016, is there any other way to monetize an app or social netowrking site without using ads.....no one wants ads...
I agree, LinkedIn was a worthless transaction for them. I just don't get it. And is it just me, or is $26 billion about $25 billion more than it's worth?
Yes they overpaid by at least $25 billion. That's why Microsoft tossed away $26 billion!!! Over hyped buyout ...they paid an extremely heavy premium.
Well.... Contrary to linkedin usage statistics look very good for WhatsApp. I would say almost everyone uses it on a daily basis. Some regions might favor chat apps like LINE but I see everyone using WhatsApp around me almost on an hourly basis if not more frequently
And how does WhatsApp monetize all those WhatsApp users? I have used it and pay zero dollars or cents ...