Facebook将以190亿美元收购WhatsApp

Facebook Inc. agreed to buy messaging company WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock, a blockbuster transaction that dwarfs the already sky-high prices that other startups have been able to recently command.

Facebook Inc.已同意以190亿美元现金加股票收购即时通讯应用提供商WhatsApp。这一巨额收购交易引起市场轰动，也令其他初创公司近期卖出的已经极高的价格相形见绌。

The 55-employee company, which acts as a kind of replacement for text messaging, has seen its use more than double in the past nine months to 450 million monthly users. That makes its service more popular than Twitter Inc., the widely used microblogging service which has about 240 million users and is currently valued at about $30 billion.

WhatsApp有55名雇员，该公司的产品相当于一种手机短信替代品。过去九个月中，该公司每月用户数增长超过一倍，达到4.5亿。这意味着该公司的服务比推特(Twitter Inc.)的服务更受欢迎。推特是一种被广泛使用的微博服务，用户数约为2.4亿，该公司目前的市值约300亿美元。

The transaction, which includes $3 billion in restricted stock units to be granted to WhatsApp's founders and employees over four years, ranks as the largest-ever purchase of a company backed by venture capital. Besides making its founders billionaires, the deal marks an enormous windfall for Sequoia Capital, the only venture firm that invested in WhatsApp.

该交易是迄今为止规模最大的针对风投支持企业的收购交易。该交易的内容包括在四年内向WhatsApp创始人和雇员授予30亿美元的受限股票单位。该交易除了将令WhatsApp的创始人成为亿万富翁外，还将给唯一投资该公司的风投公司Sequoia Capital带来巨额收益。

The deal price also easily outranks any acquisition of startups in recent years, including Facebook's purchase of photo-sharing app Instagram for more than $1 billion in 2012, and, a year earlier, Microsoft Corp.'s $8.5 billion buy of video-calling company Skype.

该交易的收购价也远高于最近几年任何初创公司获得的收购价格，比如Facebook在2012年出资超过10亿美元收购照片分享应用商Instagram的交易，以及此前一年微软(Microsoft Corp.)出资85亿美元收购视频电话公司Skype的交易。

What isn't clear is how much revenue WhatsApp makes -- the company declined to comment on its sales. It charges 99 cents a year after a one year of free use, and doesn't carry ads. On a conference call, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said he doesn't think ads are the right way to monetize messaging systems.

目前还不清楚WhatApp的收入情况，该公司对其销售方面的问题不予置评。该公司对其产品提供一年的免费使用，一年之后收取99美分的年费，其产品不搭载广告。Facebook首席执行长马克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)在一次电话会议中表示，他不认为广告是利用即时通讯系统获利的正确方式。

Beyond revenue, the deal could help shelter the social network against the shifting tastes of teen users, some of whom have grown cool to it, and bolster its position internationally. WhatsApp is particularly popular outside of the U.S.

除了获得相关收入之外，这项交易也有助于Facebook避免青少年用户兴趣变化对该公司业绩的影响，因为有些青少年已经开始厌烦Facebook了。WhatsApp在美国以外特别流行。

The transaction comes in the wake of Facebook's failed attempt to purchase another messaging service, Snapchat, for $3 billion last year. Both Snapchat and WhatsApp are popular with younger users, a demographic Facebook has been struggling to attract in recent years, according to surveys. Facebook said in an earnings call in October that some younger teens were using the service less.

在达成这项交易前，Facebook去年曾试图以30亿美元收购另一家即时通讯服务商Snapchat，但交易未能达成。调查显示，Snapchat和WhatsApp在年轻用户中都非常受欢迎，而这一用户群体正是Facebook近年来在努力争取的。Facebook曾在去年10月的一次财报会上表示，一些青少年对Facebook的使用有所减少。

Even by the get-big-fast standards of Silicon Valley, WhatsApp's story is remarkable. The company, founded in 2009 by Ukrainian Jan Koum and American Brian Acton, reached 450 million users faster than any company in history, wrote Jim Goetz, a partner at investor Sequoia Capital.

即便是按照硅谷“迅速做大”的标准，WhatsApp的发展速度也令人惊叹。红杉资本(Sequoia Capital)的合伙人戈茨(Jim Goetz)写道，WhatsApp用户数量达到4.5亿的速度要快于历史上的任何公司。该公司是由乌克兰人Jan Koum和美国人阿克顿(Brian Acton)在2009年创立的。

Facebook had fewer than 150 million users after its fourth year, one third that of WhatsApp in the same time period. WhatsApp processes 50 billion messages a day, Mr. Goetz wrote, yet has only 32 engineers and does not employ any marketing or public-relations people.

Facebook在成立四年后的用户数量还不足1.5亿，仅相当于WhatsApp同期用户数量的三分之一。戈茨称，WhatsApp现在每天处理的讯息量达500亿条，但该公司只有32名工程师，而且没有聘请任何市场营销或公关人员。

WhatsApp built its business on the idea of offering instant messaging without the fees that carriers often charge.

WhatsApp建立公司业务的理念是，提供一种无需向运营商支付费用的即时通讯服务。

The company goes out of its way to remain private, offering little in the way of information to government agencies trying to track people. Once delivered, messages are deleted from the company's servers. Privacy was particularly important to Mr. Koum, who grew up in a communist country with a secret police.

WhatsApp想方设法保护用户的隐私，几乎不向试图追踪用户行动的政府机构提供任何信息。在使用WhatsApp时，讯息一旦发送出去，就会被该公司的服务器删除。Koum是在一个有秘密警察的共产主义国家长大的，隐私对他来说尤为重要。

'Jan's childhood made him appreciate communication that was not bugged or tape,' Mr. Goetz wrote. 'When he arrived in the U.S. as a 16-year-old immigrant living on food stamps, he had the extra incentive of wanting to stay in touch with his family in Russia and the Ukraine.'

戈茨写道，Koum的童年经历使他向往往那种不被监听和录音的通讯；他16岁移民美国，只能靠食品救济券生活，那时他非常渴望与在俄罗斯和乌克兰的家人保持联系。

The transaction came together quickly. Mr. Zuckerberg said he and Mr. Koum first discussed the deal on a Sunday evening less than two weeks ago. WhatsApp, based in Mountain View, Calif., will stay in its headquarters and continue to operate independently of its new parent company, which is based nearby in Menlo Park.

这笔收购是在很短时间内达成的。扎克伯格表示，他与Koum首次讨论这笔交易是在不到两周前的一个周日的晚上。WhatsApp位于加州芒廷维尤，而Facebook的总部位于门洛帕克附近。在交易完成后，WhatsApp将继续留在芒廷维尤的总部，并独立于母公司Facebook运营。

The demographics of WhatsApp's users were likely a draw for Facebook, said Rebecca Lieb, analyst at Altimeter Group. 'This is clearly also a play at securing their base of younger users who are married to text messaging,' she said.

Altimeter Group的一位分析师表示，WhatsApp的用户群可能是吸引Facebook的原因，这笔交易显然也是为了确保该公司的年轻用户基础，因为这部分用户已经离不开即时信息的使用。

Equally enticing is the percentage of WhatsApp users who log onto the service at least once a day. That figure sits at 70%, even higher than Facebook's 61%. Such 'engagement' percentages are valuable because the more users interact with a service, the more ads or other products can be sold to them.

同样具有吸引力的是至少每天都使用WhatsApp服务的用户百分比，该比率为70%，甚至高于Facebook的61%。这样的“活跃度”非常有价值，因为与服务互动的用户数量越多，可以销售给他们的广告和其他产品就越多。

'Facebook's always working to find new reasons for people to come back,' said Forrester Research analyst Nate Elliot. 'Facebook is desperate to keep people coming back every day.'

Forrester Research分析师埃利奥特(Nate Elliot)称，Facebook总是在寻找让用户再次使用其服务的新理由，该公司迫切希望用户能够每天都登录其网站。

Instagram, a hit among teens, has also helped Facebook hedge against any loss of younger users. Instagram added a direct messaging service last year, giving Facebook control of yet another mobile messaging product on the market. The service only had about 15 million users at the time of its acquisition.

在青少年中大受欢迎的Instagram也帮助Facebook预防了年轻用户的流失。Instagram去年添加了一项直接通讯服务，Facebook由此掌控了市场上又一个移动通讯产品。在刚被收购时Instagram仅拥有大约1,500万用户。

On a per-user basis, Facebook is paying around $40 apiece for WhatsApp, roughly in line with the amount that other social media companies that have been acquired in recent years.

根据用户数量来计算，Facebook对WhatsApp每位用户的估值在40美元左右，基本和近些年被收购的其他社交媒体公司的情况差不多。

Other figures disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing show other metrics that made it particularly attractive to Facebook. WhatsApp users every day upload 600 million photos, for example, and send 100 million video messages every day.

从一份提交给美国证券交易委员会(Securities and Exchange Commission)的文件披露的其他数据中也能看出这笔交易对Facebook来说尤为具有吸引力。举例来说，WhatsApp用户每日上传6亿张照片，每日的视频信息发送量达到1亿条。

On the conference call, Messrs. Zuckerberg and Koum said it was important the company operate separately and retain the mentality of a startup, a strategy Mr. Zuckerberg said has worked with Instagram. 'What we found is it really can work,' he said.

扎克伯格和Koum在一个电话会议上称，保持WhatsApp运营的独立性及其作为初创公司所具有的精神非常重要，扎克伯格称这一策略在Instagram非常成功。他表示，我们发现这样的策略很有效。

Instagram founder Kevin Systrom, he said, has 'gotten a huge amount of value on being able to use Facebook infrastructure,' while remaining separate.

扎克伯格称，可以使用Facebook的基础设施让Instagram创始人希斯特罗姆(Kevin Systrom)收获了巨大的价值。

Mr. Koum will join Facebook's board of directors. He said the company does not plan to add advertising, sticking instead to a subscription model.

Koum将加入Facebook董事会。他表示，WhatsApp仍将维持零广告策略，继续推行订阅模式。

WhatsApp, despite its surging popularity in recent years, has been wary of raising capital and entertaining suitors. Mr. Koum told The Wall Street Journal last December that WhatsApp has 'no plans to sell, IPO, exit,' or get new funding.

虽然近几年WhatsApp的受欢迎度飙升，但该公司在对待融资以及收购兴趣方面一直很谨慎。Koum去年12月份向《华尔街日报》(The Wall Street Journal)表示，WhatsApp没有出售、上市、退出或筹资的计划。