Social network giant Facebook has closed its acquisition of mobile messaging service WhatsApp on Monday.

The final price tag has gone up by an additional $3 billion to roughly $22 billion because of the increased value of Facebook’s stock in recent months.

WhatsApp founder Jan Koum will receive nearly $2 billion in stock, vesting over a four-year period, as an inducement for him to stay with the company, Reuters reported.

WhatsApp has more than 600 million monthly users.

Snapchat, a privately owned mobile app that allows users to swap photos that can disappear after a few seconds, is raising money at a $10 billion valuation.

Facebook paid $4.59 billion in cash and 178 million shares of its stock for WhatsApp, as well 46 million of grants in restricted stock units for WhatsApp employees that will vest over a four year period.

We Phone to be blocked

Meanwhile, the Indian Intelligence Bureau has asked the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to block We Phone application as it facilitates spoofing of caller id and is difficult to identify to locate or identify actual caller.

A PTI report said IB has written to the DoT around a month back to block We Phone application which is freely available on Android Play Store and Apple’s App Store.

We Phone application, which offers call service similar to Skype, allows user to make free calls using mobile internet service to other subscriber having same application.

The application after verifying user’s phone number at the time of installation gives an option to disable the number to hide it.

IB has told DoT that in free version of this application caller id on receiver screen starts with +1777 where as in paid version any number can be set to display as caller id.

The Intelligence agency has written that the server of We Phone is located outside India and any call made from We Phone is routed through the server located abroad and therefore it is difficult to identify and locate the actual calling number or user.

Ambika M
[email protected]