Facebook buys messaging app WhatsApp for $19B

Facebook is buying mobile messaging service WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock, by far the company's largest acquisition and bigger than any that Google, Microsoft or Apple have ever done.

The world's biggest social networking company said Wednesday that it is paying $12 billion in Facebook stock and $4 billion in cash for WhatsApp. In addition, the app's founders and employees — 55 in all — will be granted restricted stock worth $3 billion that will vest over four years after the deal closes.

The deal translates to roughly 11 percent of Facebook's market value. In comparison, Google's biggest deal was its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility, while Microsoft's largest was Skype at $8.5 billion. Apple, meanwhile, has never done a deal above $1 billion.

GTBank Commences “Instant Account Opening” on Facebook

Guaranty Trust Bank plc has once again raised the service bar for African Financial Institutions, by up grading its Social Banking offering on Facebook to accommodate Instant GTBank Account Opening. 

With this upgrade, prospective customers of the foremost Bank can open accounts and immediately get their account numbers while on Facebook, without having to visit any GTBank branch.

Facebook loses millions of users in Africa.

Facebook has lost almost one million South African users in the last three months, according to social media monitoring firm SocialBakers.

The country saw a decline of 16.67 per cent, with 922,940 users leaving the site. In just the last week, 289,240 South Africans deserted Facebook, 5.22 per cent of total South African users.

South Africa is 32nd in SocialBaker’s ranking of countries according to Facebook users, with 5.537 million users, making up 11.3 per cent of the population.

In the rest of Africa, the country with the most users, Egypt, added 146,240 users to increase to 13.01 million, though Nigeria lost 1.28 million users.

The United States, though it still has more Facebook users than any other country, saw saw 3.714 million users leave the social networking site. Japan, meanwhile, 20th on the list, saw 30.3 per cent of its users leave the site, totalling 3.981 million people.

Facebook launches search engine for shared content

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the social network’s beta tool — Graph Search — is available today in limited release. It’s a bigger search bar, within Facebook, that allows members to type in natural language queries and access people, photos, places, and interests embedded within 1 trillion connections. “We look at Facebook as a big social database,” chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in announcing the so-called “graph search” function. “Just like any database, you should be able to query it.”

For example, users could search who among their friends have recently bought shoes or eaten dinner in a certain city — the theory being that Graph Search could disrupt the business models of platforms like Yelp, Foursquare, or Google Local.

For now, Graph Search isn’t capable of tracking Facebook posts or Open Graph actions like song listens, which means that the few hundred thousand people who have it will be able to only partially use it. Already, analysts and experts are questioning why Facebook is treating this announcement like a big deal. Predicting that Graph Search could become a major threat to Google and Amazon

The search engine aims to help members better navigate the vast amount of information on Facebook, which is not available on Web search engines such as Google.

UNILAG student falls victim of Facebook violence

A 21-year-old student has been hospitalised, after she was allegedly pushed down from the third floor of a building in  Lagos, following a disagreement with a man she met on the social network, Facebook.

She allegedly met a 26-year-old man (name withheld) a week earlier and last Wednesday, he invited her to a night club in Apapa from where they ended up in his family home at 1004 Estate, Victoria Island, Lagos. 

Nkiruka said on getting to the house, the man tore her dress and tried to rape her. 

She noted that the young man had earlier talked about sex on the phone prior to the outing but she told him she was menstruating.

According to Nkiruka, the man thereafter pushed her down from the third floor of the building because she refused to have sex with him. 

When contacted, the man’s mother, who was at home on the night of the incident, however said she was not aware of what happened. 

She said she slept around 10pm, while the disagreement between the couple started much later.

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The mother, who pleaded anonymity, said she paid part of the hospital bill immediately after Nkiruka was admitted, and even tried to transfer her to a private hospital.

“I took her as our own daughter and so, I can do anything that will make her recover quickly,’’ she added.

She insisted that her preliminary inquiry indicated that Nkiruka was not pushed by her son as alleged, but that she jumped on her own in the ensuing scuffle.

When the Divisional Police Officer of Bar Beach, Victoria Island, Lagos, Mr. Fayoade Adegoke was contacted, he said that Nkiruka wrote in her statement that she jumped on her own, in order to escape being raped. 

Adegoke said he ordered his men to convey the victim to the hospital immediately after he was informed of the incident by security guards in the area. 

The DPO said the suspect was released on bail, pending further investigation into the matter.