Investors seemed to like what Mark Zuckerberg had to say during the Facebook CEO’s keynote at the Mobile World Congress on Monday.
Facebook’s stock is up nearly four percent today following Zuckerberg’s 45-minute talk in Barcelona. The 29-year-old mostly focused on two topics during a fireside chat with journalist David Kirkpatrick: Facebook’s recent $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp and Zuckerberg’s vision for Internet.org.
Zuckerberg called WhatsApp the “most engaging app that we’ve ever seen exist on mobile,” and said the acquisition of the mobile messaging app is part of Facebook’s overall goal to connect every person in the entire world.
“It’s that vision that makes [WhatsApp] such a great fit,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg also said that he thinks WhatsApp, which has nearly a half billion users, is actually worth more than the $19 billion Facebook spent on it. He explained how other similar messaging apps like WeChat and KakaoTalk are already successfully monetizing their product at a level of $2-to-$3 per person.
“If we can do a pretty good job of helping WhatsApp to grow, it’s going to be a huge business,” he said.
In addition, Zuckerberg explained that the acquisition will help WhatsApp spend the next five years connecting more people worldwide — which is part of Internet.org’s vision — instead of figuring out revenue models and monetization strategies.
“Rather than focusing on [revenue], for them to go out and connect one, two, three billion more people — if we can do that, we’ll be well on our way to realizing this vision of connecting everyone,” Zuckerberg said.
That’s the big vision for Internet.org, a global partnership that Facebook is apart of which hopes to get everyone on the planet connected to the Internet.
“One thing that I think it’s easy to take for granted is that most people in the world don’t have access to the Internet at all,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s about 2.7 billion people now and it’s actually growing a lot slower than you’d imagine.”
Zuckerberg cited a new study from Deloitte that noted how increasing Internet access in developing countries can increase productivity by as much as 25 percent while generating $2.2 trillion in GDP and more than 140 million new jobs.
In order to have more people connected, Zuckerberg said that Internet needs to be cheaper and needs to have more appeal. Internet.org is looking for more partners to build an affordable “on-ramp” to the Internet that could include basic text-based services and ideally give low-income people more of a reason to buy a data plan.
He repeated that Internet.org is a long-term vision.
“We’re probably going to lose money on this for quite a while,” he said, but added that Facebook’s Board of Directors is behind the mission.
Zuckerberg also took a few questions from the crowd and someone asked if he’s still thinking about buying SnapChat.
“After buying a company for $16 billion, you’re probably done for a while,” he responded.
Facebook now has a market value of $181 billion, surpassing Amazon.com’s market value of $161 billion.
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