Month: February 2014

Blog Post 1

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Facebook Buys Whatsapp for $19 Billion on CNN
This short video was published on February 20th, and covers how the founders of Whatsapp are newly billionaires after the business deal they made with Facebook to sell their creation for $19 billion. This video mentions how Facebook and twitter both turned down co-founder Brian Acton for a job in 2009, but that didn’t seem to stop him. It gives some information about the application and why it is worth $19 billion. This app has grown exponentially over the last few years, and now has 400 million users. This video also explains why Facebook viewed this as a worthwhile deal.

This story is extremely interesting and relevant because the social media issue has completely taken over our lives, and an amount of money that large will catch anyones attention no matter what it’s about. Although it looked like your typical news broadcast, it did offer a small variety of images. The audio was clear, although I did believe the second woman spoke a little quickly. I liked how they took the time to explain why this product is so valuable and could possibly be listed at this price, even though it seems extreme. I also liked how both visual aids and graphs were used to help the audience understand what they were explaining. I thought it was great how they put in Acton’s personal tweets in the beginning to show that he progressed from being turned away, to highly sought after. There wasn’t really a large variation in the kinds of shots or transitions since it was a traditional news story, but I felt it served its purpose well and got the information across that was needed.