One simple messaging app could provide voice calling, video calling, instant payments, and more. And it could serve as a platform for building all sorts of other simple services in places where wireless bandwidth is limited but people are hungry for the sort of instant communication we take for granted here in the US. Facebook shelled out $19 billion because the app-a way of sending text messages over the Internet, without paying the typically high SMS fees that wireless carriers charge to send texts across their private networks-had reached a similarly enormous 450 million people across Europe and the developing world, including India and Africa. This was because WhatsApp doesn't do much PR-and because its eponymous smartphone app was predominantly used overseas.īut, oh, how it was used overseas. The move surprised even the small coterie of journalists who so closely cover the Bay Area tech scene.

When Facebook shelled out a stunning $19 billion for WhatsApp in February of last year, few here in the US had heard of the tiny Silicon Valley startup.

Whatsapp creator