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

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

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 going to have the ability to enable larger companies, not only small businesses, to integrate a new API to send and receive messages with people on the WhatsApp platform.” This was echoed by a Tuesday note by Barclays analysts, who wrote, “We have been told by many of our checks over the last few years that ‘once Jan leaves, that’s when the ads show up.”

That would be: now.

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Venkat Ananth

Venkat is currently in his tenth year in journalism. Prior to The Ken, he was Deputy Content Editor at Mint as part of the newspaper’s digital team. He also wrote in-depth features on the business of sport for the newspaper. His earlier assignments include Yahoo! (as a columnist) and the Hindustan Times, where he began his career. Born in Mumbai, Venkat holds a Bachelor of Mass Media (Journalism) degree from SIES College of Arts, Science and Commerce, Mumbai and a Master of Arts degree in International Studies from Goldsmiths, University of London. He currently resides in New Delhi, where he moved nearly five years ago.

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