The most connected man in the world

As everybody knows, Mark Zuckerberg bought whatsapp last week.
During last days the name of Facebook CEO is on everyone' s lips and this is the direct evidence of how is this trading important.
Some consider a folly the amount of money paid for the most widespread and popular mobile messaging startup, and I guess many of you here were astonished reading the "price" paid for the startup. The purchase price is insanely high for a startup with only 55 employees, the $19 billion valutation means Facebook believes WhatsApp is worth over $42 per user.
Thus the question arises: Is whatsapp worth $19 billion?
Gordon Kelly on Forbes shows us some reasons why Whatsapp' s valuation is really worth:

First of all the author underlines how is important both for social networks both for
mobile messaging startups the growth potential: the deal Facebook CEO stressed "There are countries [such as] Korea or Japan where another messaging service is bigger, but if you look across the world, WhatsApp – across Europe, Latin America, India, a lot of places in Asia – is the clear leader.". There are places in the world in which Whatsapp is not (for a little while yet) the market leader, and I mean contries like Japan, China, North Korea where Whatsapp has plenty of competitors like Line, WeChat or Kakao Talk. In this sense the amount paid for Whatsapp seems tiny. If we consider the importance and the support that Facebook could give to the spread of WhatsApp across the world (in particular across the developing countries) and the growth factor, the purchase is a very good deal.
Now Mark takes over control of the social connection, but he has to pay attention, not all that glitters is gold.

                                                                                                                          Luca Luciani

Source:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2014/02/20/5-key-reasons-whatsapp-is-worth-19bn-to-facebook/