Calling A Spade

Every conversation with clients and co-workers in the last several days has involved some references to the Whatsapp deal. Mostly folks are plain puzzled. Many want to believe the math made sense and there is some grand design that they are simply failing to see. Some are trying to hard to explain why this is a good move for Facebook. Others are calling it a big mistake. Almost no one is on the fence on this one - eventually you need to pick your side. If you are in the technology business, you have to have an opinion on something of such unfathomable scale. 

For reasons I don't fully understand, the level of schadenfreude around it seems very high - across the board. Irrespective of their position people want to see this turn out to be a really bad decision for Facebook. Depending on the person, it would vindicate them for different reasons. When the news of the deal broke, the "expert" commentary had starting out being ambivalent. The Whatsapp outage within days of it appeared to have emboldened people to come out and say how they really feel. And then I read this today -  comparing this to the bursting of the dot com bubble.