I'll give you Facebook, and MAYBE Twitter. But WhatsApp is a messenger service, a space where tons of others have come and gone. I'm not sure what bleeding edge they are sitting on in regards to scientific discovery.
Where do they make the majority of their money? Is it advertising? or is it investments that they have made with public money? I am curious what their profits look like that their valuation is 328 Billion dollars.
There's clearly value because lots of people use it. You don't need any technical breakthroughs to create value. Possibly to monetize it but not to create it.
Btw. the underlying technology is pretty cool imo but that's besides the point. I mean they had what 30 engineers when they were bought (for about 500 million users)? Erlang yay.