So hungry for life, it would suck out the lives of others in exchange for granting magic powers?

Or perhaps so afraid of death that it feels compelled to 'eat' or kill any rival?

Facebook spends US $16 Billion on WhatsApp
$16,000,000,000 (based on the US definition of Billion rather than a million millions).


Clearly the perception of future monetized rewards coming from this acquisition justify the price - in the minds of Zuckerberg & co. They see money everywhere as some kind of tax on communication, that is paid and collected and perhaps directed.

As someone outside the social networking scene it reeks to me of the drug-dealer scam - or the banking scam; free access to goodies as the initial phase and then milking the dependency by whatever mens available.

The thing about social networking is it grows history of investment and identification, that follows the same patterns of development as all else that lives and dies. And the attempt to possess or control it only serves to shift from a relative innocence and freedom to a managed existence.
The politic generally in the world has retreated from the embrace of freedom to a substitution of virtual freedom - as a compensation for self disillusionment or sense of inadequacy.
Distraction and dissociation is the mechanism of denial. If the mind is kept busy enough, the fears, blames and angers are kept at bay,
From another perspective, if you can nurture and encourage such disconnections within the consciousness of others, you can effectively asset strip their energy while they believe they are exercising freedom.
The principle of sharing life is perhaps its most fundamental motive, yet the basis upon which that occurs can be usurped by a 'middleman'.
Or a cartel of interests that work behind the scenes of the front end.
What is true about life is that our individual experience of it is what we each make of it - and that we can change our minds about our minds.
History repeats itself in one set of clothes or another. But we can observe consciousness and wake up to the living now - and of course any technology can extend the life that you are. No less than it can extend and reinforce the life that you are not!