To look at it from the other side though, what if you didn't get all strategerie about it and just did some napkin math on the value of Whatsapp users:

Facebook revenue per user is about 9 bucks per year. Monetized at the same rate, that's over 4 billion in revenue for the Whatsapp network, per year. On one hand, they can't monetize them anywhere close to that rate yet, but on the other hand, they'll seek to and the number of users is growing. Oh yeah, and that's revenue, not profit.

When I look at the acquisition as a defensive strategic play, it looks terrible, but if I look at it just nuts and bolts....well, I honestly don't know enough to value it properly, but it doesn't look overtly abysmal.

I was on a car ride with mk this past Fall and was telling him about an idea I had for a messaging app. I wish I was a software engineer because I think that messaging apps are actually quite difficult to implement. Syncing is a real challenge. People are out there doing it left and right, but I swear to god Apple can't implement services to save its life. iMessage is the buggiest, conversation losing-est, least "it just works" IP messaging app I've ever used by far. I thought AOL had this sorted out in the 90's...