Facebook buys WhatsApp for $19 billion bones

Facebook Inc. has announced that it will buy smartphone messaging company WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock. The 55-employee company operates a successful messaging service that has seen its number of users double in only the last nine months to 450 million monthly users. That makes WhatsApp more popular than Twitter, the microblogging service that has about 240 million users and is c ...