Ingo Mierswa CEO of Rapidminer has stated that “Whatsapp was a good deal for facebook”. Ingo points out that with over 450 million users WhatsApp is already a very strong player on the market. Going forward Ingo believes that the company can reach an user base of over 1 billion users as its user base is extremely high outside the US.
Taking Germany as an example Ingo notes that, “almost half of the German population, are using WhatsApp on a regular basis”. Text analysis of Whatsapp messages can give facebook a deep insight into the “desires and interests of an important economy like Germany”. Also, “usage of text analytics could further improve FB’s ability to offer personalized ads to their base”. This additional data from Whatsapp could lead to building of “better predictive models and better placed ads”, which in turn could lead to a 10 % increase of revenue for FB. A 10% increase in revenue for FB could pay off the acquisition handsomely.
