WhatsApp Is Actually Worth More Than $19B, Says Facebook’s Zuckerberg, And It Was Internet.org That Sealed The Deal — techcrunch.com

More than a few people were surprised when Facebook said it would pay $19 billion for messaging app startup WhatsApp, but today Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that he believed it was actually worth more. “If we can do a good job with WhatsApp [and] grow it, it will be a huge business,” he said today during a keynote presentation at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. He also shed a bit of light on why WhatsApp, led by co-founder Jan Koum, became interested in a Facebook exit — by all accounts, a tie-up that Koum in 2012 claimed was not a route he would have wanted to take: it was because of Internet.org, the Facebook-led initiative to bring internet connectivity to developing economies.

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