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Facebook acquires WhatsApp. Finally

Four years after he sold the messaging app to Facebook for $19 billion, Jan Koum has left the company. His departure brings an end to years of resistance, on what Facebook could do with WhatsApp. In a way, it opens a can of worms. Also, opportunity

04/05/18

Venkat Ananth

Soon after WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum left the company, Facebook announced that it would further open its second-biggest product, to advertisers and businesses

Koum’s departure is significant because it signals Facebook’s takeover of WhatsApp, four years after it acquired it for $19 billion. Prior to Koum, its other co-founder, Brian Acton left the company last year

With Instagram and core Facebook ad inventory almost full, Facebook could look towards its messenger products for its next wave of monetisation

Which also begs the privacy question, more so in India, where it recently test-launched its peer-to-peer payment features on WhatsApp

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It is all coming down. Fast. Less than 24 hours after Jan Koum, the founder of WhatsApp, left Facebook, David Marcus, the company’s vice-president of messaging products, announced the inevitable at Facebook’s annual F8 Developers conference. “As far as advertising is concerned, we’re definitely getting WhatsApp more open,” Marcus told CNBC. He added, “We’re now…

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