Facebook buys WhatsApp

Social network giant Facebook grows by acquiring Whats App, a messaging service for smartphones with 450 million users. The purchase price is set to $19 billion. Approximately $4 billion paid in cash, the rest is to be paid in Facebook shares.

WhatsApps founder Jan Koum will thus become a major shareholder in Facebook. He will also take place in the social network's board of directors.

Facebook have likely made the acquisition because they lack an operating system of its own, such as Google's Android or Apple's iOS. With its own operating system, Facebook can now pre-install apps, and programs and by doing so bring up the use of its own products.

Facebooks previous attempts to market it 's own user OS Home, which could be installed to Android, fell flat and become a flop. Facebook is now seemingly trying to redeem this venture.

After the announcement Facebook 's stock fell 4.4 percent, signaling that the market apparently doesn't share Zuckerberg's interest in WhatsApp. 

Marketing Technology Landscape Rewritten (again)

Scott Brinker at the Chief Marketing Technologist Blog recently released an updated version of the widely circulated landscape of Marketing Technology. The 2014 version has a few updates but also plenty of omissions. 

It comes with one main caveat: this graphic is not comprehensive. It is just a sample, albeit a large one, of the many different kinds of software available to marketers today. There are many more companies — indeed, entire categories — that were not included, merely due to the constraints of time and space.

And by the time you read this, it will inevitably be out of date due to new launches, re-launches, expansions, exits, and mergers. The pace of change in this field is breathtaking.

Click the image for a larger pic.

Mobile Marketing a 1960

I found an interesting picture while surfing that Internet thing today. It is two old, Ericsson labeled busses on what seems to be the Island in Toronto, circa 1970. Since my girlfriend is Canadian, and used to live in Toronto, the CN Tower is a very easily recognizable landmark to me. The added bonus of the Swedish vehicles sparked my interest and I decided to do some digging into this picture and its origins.

Ericsson opened its first Canadian office in Montreal in 1953, selling telephones and intercoms systems to telephone companies and to private businesses. As the Canadian market and business continued to flourish, in 1976 Ericsson came up with an innovative way of meeting its customers – on wheels. So in 1976, Ericsson in Canada introduced the Eribus, a customized motorhome developed and designed for visiting clients for on-site product presentations and meetings.

The Eribus was a fully equipped mobile meeting space with a conference table, projector, various product demonstrations and a small kitchen to host customers who were unable to visit the Ericsson showrooms. In a country as large, and scarcely populated as Canada, the Eribus proved to be an excellent take on an early virtual office.

Today this idea seems rather stone age, virtual meeting rooms are a given at any modern office, but it is a interesting idea that it all started with a pair of busses.