With a $19 Billion Acquisition, Will the Social Media Giant Benefit From this Deal?

Earlier this week Facebook bought the mobile messaging service WhatsApp for$19 billion in cash and stock. This is Facebook’s largest acquisition to date. This deal is the latest and greatest from the world’s biggest social networking company. Facebook paid partly in cash and partly in stock for WhatsApp.

    For those unfamiliar with this mobile messaging site WhatsApp, it is a messaging service that runs through the Internet instead of a phone service. When downloading the app, the service syncs your contacts in order to connect you with other WhatsApp users in your address book. This syncing also allows WhatsApp to target new users. This service is especially popular in Europe and other countries overseas where phone companies change from country to country.

What will WhatsApp add to Facebook? That is hard to say. Since the social media cite began almost ten years ago, it has become the largest social media site in the world however recently Facebook has been losing steam among the young teenage demographic. With this acquisition perhaps Facebook is trying to engage a younger audience. With many users beginning to engage in online conversations outside of Facebook on things such as GChat, iMessage and Yahoo Messenger, Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp brings the social media giant back to the forefront of the online messaging world.

Without a doubt, Facebook is aiming to increase its user engagement with the new acquisition. Also, WhatsApp is in the business of collecting people’s data through contacts. Facebook is also in the business of collecting personal data so this partnership should transition seamlessly.

Another thing to consider is, what and if Facebook will change anything about WhatsApp. What Facebook acquired Instagram in 2013 there was controversy about Facebook changing things about the uber- popular app. Hopefully Facebook will just jump on the WhatsApp train and not fix what isn’t broken. Only time will tell.