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It could certainly be a large factor in the massive price.

$19B is a whole lot of money, even (especially?) for a company the size of WhatsApp

Interestingly the size of WhatsApp (the team and the required hardware) compared to its userbase might actually be one of the reasons why the price went so high.

In other words, - they had a very good engineer to end user ratio.

Oh please, the companies are being bought out not because of some engineering masterpiece, but for already checked and working idea + loyal userbase.

I think the parent meant that in terms of a technical cost to user count ratio.

I don't think so. They'd obviously built a stable platform, but it's not anything that Facebook couldn't have recreated with far less investment.

Then they probably spent so much to acquire the user base.

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