A closer look
In 2014, Facebook dropped an eye-watering $19 billion to buy WhatsApp, an app that generated basically zero revenue and had exactly 55 employees. Wall Street thought Mark Zuckerberg had lost his mind. But antitrust regulators and economists eventually realized this wasn't a software acquisition; it was a data harvesting monopoly play. Facebook was buying the unmonetized social graphs and phone contacts of half a billion people to feed their advertising algorithm. The price tag proved that raw behavioral data is officially the most valuable asset class on the planet.
