Social Networking giant Facebook is going to buy fast-growing mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock, as it looks for ways to boost its popularity, especially among the youth.
WhatsApp has more than 450 million users around the world and the craze for it has stunned many Silicon Valley observers. But it underscores Facebook's determination to win the market for messaging, an indispensable utility in a mobile era.
By combining text messaging and social networking, messaging apps provide a quick way for smartphone users to trade everything from brief texts to flirtatious pictures to YouTube clips - bypassing the need to pay wireless carriers for messaging services.
And it helps Facebook tap teens who will eschew the mainstream social networks and prefer WhatsApp and rivals such as Line and WeChat, which have exploded in size as mobile messaging takes off.
WhatsApp is adding about a million users per day, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on his page on Wednesday.
"WhatsApp will complement our existing chat and messaging services to provide new tools for our community," he wrote on his Facebook page. " Since WhatsApp and (Facebook) Messenger serve such different and important users, we will continue investing in both."
Smartphone-based messaging apps are now developing rapidly across North America, Asia and Europe. As part of the deal, WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum will join Facebook's board, and the social network will grant an additional $3 billion worth of restricted stock units to WhatsApp's founders, including Koum. That is on top of the $16 billion in cash and stock that Facebook will pay.
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