It was like 40 or 50, but yeah the points stands, it was still like two orders of magnitude smaller than any other 10+ billion dollar exit we’ve ever seen.

Agreed, and I was highlighting how post-acquisition they moved away from the core functionality and started stuffing other apps into it in a pretty predictable fashion.

5 seconds on google finds that adding a SnapChat stories clone is exactly where WhatsApp has gone now, just like Messenger and Instagram: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/01/whatsapp-stories/

Personally I’ve minimized social network use and don’t think every single app needs a status broadcast feature, but it’s popular. Not just a group chat app anymore though.

It got acquired for the trust people put in the brand, not the technology or the employees. Facebook needed a backdoor into people's contact lists and WhatsApp had a huge user base of people who authorised it to access contacts.