Zuckerberg Pays $19B for Startup Whose Founders Couldn't Get Jobs at Facebook

http://vdare.com/posts/despite-h-1b-shortage-zuckerberg-not-yet-broke-pays-19b-for-whatsapp

by diamonis • 12 years ago

12 14 12 years ago

selectout• 12 years ago

Chances are he wouldn't have created WhatsApp at Facebook so this is actually a win all around for both parties (assuming Facebook can find the value they think they will in WhatsApp).

nilkn• 12 years ago

assuming Facebook can find the value they think they will in WhatsApp

History has shown it is quite difficult to monetize a large user base acquired in this way. It is very possible that Facebook will get nothing out of this besides the elimination of an opponent.

That said, there's really nothing particularly special about WhatsApp. There are many other apps just like it. Perhaps it just came a bit sooner than the others, but it seems clear that something else would have taken its place had WhatsApp never been made.

ruhruh3• 12 years ago

I'm not in favor of censorship, I think everybody be able to say whatever they want blahblahblah

However, vdare is a joke. Wtf is this doing on HN, this has no business here

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/gro...

_pius2• 12 years ago

Heh, we were clearly saying "wtf" at the same time ...

CanSpice• 12 years ago

Maybe it was a ploy to get a bunch of traffic to their server and temporarily DDoS it?

ryguytilidie• 12 years ago

Perhaps human beings experience growth over many years? Perhaps this guy was nowhere as good when he interviewed?

jamesaguilar• 12 years ago

Or, more likely, he was good then too, and hiring at most competitive firms has a high false negative rate. This should surprise no one who's been involved in it. It's by design.

_pius2• 12 years ago

You guys realize VDARE is a well-known hate group and bastion of white nationalist angst, right?

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/gro...

ruhruh3• 12 years ago

Yup.

Here of all places I think we should be open to provocative & "dangerous" views but in this case one should be aware of the source.

diamonis2• 12 years ago

Yes. Be aware of the source, viz, $PLC exposed...and it ain't pretty to look at...)

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/king-fearmongers_7145...

"Critics have charged that the way the SPLC counts hate groups renders its impressive tallies essentially meaningless. One of the most vocal critics is Laird Wilcox, a self-described political liberal in Olathe, Kansas, who has been tracking radical-fringe organizations on both the left and the right for five decades, amassing an enormous documentary archive that is now housed at the library of the University of Kansas. According to Wilcox, many of the organizations on the SPLC’s expansive list “may be two guys and a post-office box,” while others might not exist at all. “Their lists of hate groups never have addresses that can be checked,” Wilcox said in a telephone interview. “I’ve had police departments across the country calling me and saying we can’t find this group [on the SPLC’s list]. All they can find is a post-office box, so I have to tell them that I don’t know whether they even exist.” In a self-published book, The Watchdogs, he criticized the SPLC for having “misleadingly padded” its list of white-supremacy organizations. In particular, Wilcox faulted the SPLC for maintaining that three men accused of killing a police officer in Cortez, Colorado, in 1998 had belonged to a supposedly racist and anti-Semitic militia group called the Four Corners Patriots for whose existence no evidence ever emerged. “People have tried to track down these groups, but they couldn’t find them,” Wilcox said."

omonra• 12 years ago

And SPLCENTER is a peddler of white guilt bent on making its founders rich: http://www.centerforimmigrationtruth.org/SPLC-follow-the-mon...

How about sticking to the actual article and discussing its merits?

sssilver• 12 years ago

I'm here in USA on H1b. I'm 29 and I've only arrived about a month ago. Coming here has been an extremely difficult and long process for me, with thousands of job interviews ending with the first question -- "do you have a work permit". Presumably I'm not exceptional enough to just get a job with a company like Google, so it's supposed to be this difficult for someone like me.

But articles like this still make me feel very sad.

Zuckerberg Pays $19B for Startup Whose Founders Couldn't Get Jobs at Facebook

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