Zuckerberg ‘likes’ WhatsApp purchase

FACEBOOK founder Mark Zuckerberg has announced that his company would purchase the social networking application, Whatsapp, for more than R200 billion.

“I’m excited to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire WhatsApp and that their entire team will be joining us at Facebook. Our mission is to make the world more open and
connected. We do this by building services that help people share any type of content with any group of people they want. WhatsApp will help us do this by continuing to
develop a service that people around the world love to use every day,” said Zuckerberg in the statement.

He noted that WhatsApp is a simple, fast and reliable mobile messaging service that is used by over 450 million people on every major mobile platform.
It is believed that more than 1 million people sign up for WhatsApp every day. “It is on its way to connecting one billion people. More and more people rely on WhatsApp to communicate with all of their contacts every day,” said Zuckerberg.

He also said that WhatsApp would continue to operate independently within Facebook. “Over the next few years, we’re going to work hard to help WhatsApp grow and connect the whole world. WhatsApp will complement our existing chat and messaging services to provide new tools for our community. Since WhatsApp and Messenger serve such different and important uses, we will continue investing in both and making them each great products for everyone,” said Zuckerberg.

“WhatsApp had every option in the world, so I’m thrilled that they chose to work with us. I’m looking forward to what Facebook and WhatsApp can do together, and to
developing great new mobile services that give people even more options for connecting.”