Everyone is talking about Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp for $19B and along with Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram for $1B, I really don’t see how these acquisitions help Facebook (and apparently I’m not alone according to financial analysts). I don’t see these driving more usage on Facebook and I guess I don’t see how the added data you get form WhatsApp users being that valuable to Facebook, but who knows, maybe I’m missing something obvious. Or maybe it’s simply a way to consolidate consumer tech companies and have more of our personal information consolidated across different platforms that most would think are separate (I bet there’s a lot of kids out there who use Instagram and bash Facebook without realizing that they’re still drinking from the Facebook teat). I’ve used WhatsApp and it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t great either, the app didn’t always notify me when I got a message and I would sometimes have to open the app before I saw I got a message from hours ago. I found actual text messages to be far more convenient and efficient. So I’m not too sure what the huge draw of WhatsApp and how they got so many users around the world. But in any case, good for them and congratulations to the 50 employees who I’m sure all became instant millionaires/billionaires. Still waiting for my big pay day, but I’m thinking I’ll have better luck playing the lottery.