I just don’t get it

For what type of company is Facebook paying $19b?

I’m not what you’d call a skeptic. On the contrary, I not only understand, but also ardently defend the role of technology when it comes to changing our habits, the way we do things, and even the way we live. On many occasions, I have welcomed acquisitions of companies at what other commentators feel are inflated prices, instead seeing such events through the prism of growth forecasts.

That said, however hard I look, I cannot find any logic in Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp. Needless to say, I know a fair amount about the application: I don’t use it, and haven’t done so for some time, but I do help out a Spanish startup, Spotbros, which has developed an application that has been dubbed by mani “the Spanish WhatsApp”. Not that this has in any way influenced me in this case, although it has given me the opportunity to study WhatsApp in some depth.

To begin with, the price Facebook has paid for WhatsApp is completely over the top. In fact it’s insane. Yes, I know, the application is used by millions and has grown rapidly. So? Does anybody really think that WhatsApp users are any more loyal than users of other, now defunct, services? That each of the 450 million WhatsApp users is worth $42? Is it because they pay around a dollar a year to use the service, those that have bothered…