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ITALY VOWED TODAY to unblock some €2 million to save the long-neglected ruins of Pompeii after rain caused further damage to the UNESCO World Heritage landmark.
Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said he was “unblocking many measures which will get the machine working” amid anger about the slow pace of a multi-million EU-backed project to restore the famous Roman site.
Temple of Venus
Franceschini’s statement came after the Temple of Venus and the walls of a tomb and shop in the archaeological site near Naples were damaged by rainfall on Sunday and Monday.
The damaged Porta Nocera doorway. Pic: APhoto/Salvatore La Porta
EU Regional Policy Commissioner Johannes Hahn said that “every collapse is a huge defeat” and urged Italy “to take care of Pompeii, because it is emblematic not only for Europe but also for the world.”
Franceschini stressed that the EU “can be sure that Italy is taking care of Pompeii, both in terms of emergency measures and in the long term.”
Makeover
In addition to the two million euros, Rome has also proposed a tie-up with aerospace and defence giant Finmeccanica to use some of its satellite technology for site maintenance and weather warnings.
Last year, conservation workers began a €105 million makeover of Pompeii, funded by the EU to the tune of €41.8 million.
But according to the Corriere della Sera daily Tuesday, only €588,000 has been spent so far — just 0.56 percent of the funds.
The project is seen as crucial to the survival of Pompeii after a series of collapses at the 44-hectare site in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius – the volcano that destroyed the city in 79 AD.
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Well that’s just feckin great.
A good app ruined.
The App hasn’t changed in any way other than it’s owner! It’s all in your head!
Yet …dun dun dun!
I’d say it will. Ads, upgrades required, account setup.
They didn’t pay a fortune for it to keep it free?!!
Not yet…..
Either the Facebook app will finally be decent or the whatsapp one will become shite.
Adaway for android and the ads won’t concern you. I think what’s app were already planning to charge in a few months. I’ll be moving to an alternative when they do
They have been charging for a while now….. 1st year free….then something like 70 – 80c per year which I would have been happy to pay.
Whatsapp don’t charge and released a statement saying they never would last year.
That was a hoax doing the rounds.
Facebook bought Instagram and didn’t change anything so I can’t understand why anyone is getting in a flap about this. Calm down people.
Yea, the future of open communications is looking bright.
WhatsAd now
They very much do charge, after your first year
I presume you are being ironical? Facebook did nothing to instagram? Yes they did. Instagram now has adverts. They waited a year before making the change after all the panic had died down. It now has adverts though.
It was hardly a hoax……open whatsapp…..go to settings…then payment options……
Now Facebook have a load of pictures of my flute!
And your penis!
Pity, now I’ve to delete whatsapp, cant stand FB.
Farewell privacy and farewell WhatsApp.
+1 already deleted
Only 30 people work for Whatsapp, development done in Russia for cheap, $8m equity funding and all of a sudden sold for $16bn. Unbelievable deal for the founders!
Incredible! Apps are where the money is to be made at the moment… Now if I could just think of a decent one!!!
a decent one, please do, cos i tell you something there ain’t many left.
it will be something else soon, go left, not right.
Indeed, Flappy bird guy was getting 50,000 a day for that abomination.
And the tech bubble gets bigger and bigger. Stupidly over valued.
Absolutely! What sort of turnover & profit could a free service like this possibly have enjoyed? Multipliers in tech are negative numbers these days it seems!
Rumour has it that Google will snap up Twitter…makes sense.
yea, never used this whatsitapp called, then theres delicious? for what??? mashable? oh lord, stumble upon, tumblr or pinterest? used to be flickr. all just S**** photos and vids, text text text text text and more text. Theres going to be some overweight fat a***** come 2020.
Isn’t it free for a year then 89 cent for a whole year? That’s roughly 400m profit a year, at least… in theory.
16billion … What’s app with that …
Delete app. Quickly. Do it now.
Good while it lasted
Let’s hope they don’t get their greedy mitts on Viber.
Viber already been bought out by Rakuten… Not much better, really…
Deleted. Moving to viber from now on
Awful news. Bet they will ruin it by making ya log into FB to use it. Will be deleting the app now.
Madness valuation
Not really, there are 40 billion messages sent per day, compared to 20 billion through Facebook.
Also they just bought 400 million phone numbers.
Yep and that’s what all this is about, selling the users. Someone’s phone number and name is advertising nirvana.
40 bucks per number? Can get phone books for free! Maybe some truth to that, but it’s still not justification for the price. There has to be some logic to this deal, but for the life of me I cannot see it. I’d be starting to worry if I was holding tech stock though – this looks like approaching the peak, and the trough is going to be steep.
Not really, considering the daily volume of traffic/activity that is on the internet…
Viber will be next on their list so then
Viber was sold last week for 900million. Looks like a bargain now. Can’t see how WhatsApp is worth nearly 20 times as much?
Only ever used viber. Never used what’s app. Viber is a great service
Crazy valuation. Whatsapp has no sales whatsoever. How will it generate money ? This just shows Facebook has failed miserably in its strategy to capture the messaging market (questionable what that market is worth if you ask me). This is a panic buy! Pressure is on FB to deliver results on its own $170 bn valuation despite sales of only $7bn and profit of less than $2 bn last year.!
That and they have a shed load of IPO cash lying around and, it would appear, lack either an imagination or a broker!
If you paid to download the app on ios, you get a lifetime subscription and don’t have to pay anymore.
If you downloaded it for free over the past year or so, you will get it for free for a year and then you will charged 99c per year for using it – http://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/general/23014681
What’s app have forecasted to have 1b customers in the near future and already roughly the same amount messages are sent via what’s app and global SMS!
They paid $4b in real money for it. If you assume that 80% of 1b people pay for it, you are looking at revenue of 800m per year…they will have their investment paid back in 6 years (simplistic view of it)
yea but it won’t make calls like Skype, thats why they’re bigger plus ios is free and theres more android users who wont like to be charged per year. i dunno, theyre all the flipping same to me. Its one of the most copied markets, next year someone else will copy it but ADD voice calls. All you need is tech skill, but its all slow innovation, lots of baby step copying.
80% won’t pay for it. There are loads of free messaging apps. Easy come easy go.
No escape from facebook.
Viber was sold to Japanese ECommerce company Rakuten…last week
Such a simple app that is pretty much perfect as it is. I can’t imagine Facebook bringing anything positive to it. Grrr.
FB is yesterday’s news and they’re scrabbling around in the dark to find something to stay current!
Adios FB!
I got it for free
App bubble?
you betchya! sheep follow sheep, fatter sheep too :)
Facebook is too intrusive!! Just goes to show Facebook are desperate to keep people from ever leaving FB.
First it was instagram, which it bought for about $715 million, then they tired to buyout snapchat but failed and now whatsapp. its big business making money off your privacy. Ive left FB and wont use any APP that they buy.
Its a very big concern that all these corrupt US Government spy tools start to merge.
Post tax profits appear to be in the region of $20m, although with untapped advertising revenue potential that FB will likely utilise (could result in reduced demand though, so tough one to call). Industry multiplier around the 32 mark, so conservative valuation around $640m, say rising to $1bn when unrealised advertising potential is added. So that’s a $15bn acquisition premium. I must be missing something, but this just appears to be utter madness. Realistically FB need to grow revenues about 2500% and maintain long term market share to ever have a hope of even breaking even on this.
How do they ever hope to make this money back?!
Everyone thought that snapchat owners were mad to turn down 3 billion.
I have recently installed kakoa talk looks ok, just waiting for it to take off.
huge in Korea and Japan
Mind Blowing stupidity on the part of Facebook, albeit pure desperation it would appear. Who if anyone actually spends money using the what’s app application, indeed who takes a blind bit of notice to any advertising on either facebook or whats app. How is it possible a simple messaging app could be worth 4 billion on cash, let alone the share facebook is offering as part of the deal, this deal has all the hallmarks of another Bebo Fiasco and this at a time were facebook is loosing its mojo with fewer and fewer people subscribing and spending less time on it. Bizzare stuff. When you look at the mobile networks offering unlimited data these days, free use of various messaging app’s, webtext from your phone, Skype, you can even make phone calls using the facebook app,combined with sim only contracts etc at half the normal tariff costs, it begs the question who if any company is actually making REAL money these days, I just don’t get it.
The price is more than likely off set by the user base rather than the technology. Whatsapp is closing in on 1billion users – thats a massive market share for facebook to own. If you think of all the social media tools people use on a daily basis Facebook have a massive slice of that (Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram)
As other articles have pointed out – whats app is huge in developing countries and Asia – once they follow suit and have a credible uptake on smart phones – Facebook with have their fingers in a massive amount of pies.
The valuation is massive and probably a bit of a punt but should it pay off it will make Facebook one of the biggest and influential companies that has every existed.
Now we (Whatsapp) are zucking diesel…
If you want to get your privacy back try Telegram, its free and you can encrypt chats or set the app to erase chats straight away and its free, also try TOR for more privacy
I said good bye to Facebook during the week
It’ll have to be viber now so..
Great won’t be long before they monetize this app and litter it with online ads :(
Great new in set to profit massively from this :)
Haha you know whatsapp isn’t listed right? So unless you’re Jim Goetz this is one of the more transparent trolling attempts I’ve witnessed!
For someone who tries to portray themselves as a constantly successful investor, it might serve you well to learn the difference between public and private companies!
Try line or we chat as an alternative they are free
Kakao talk is much better than what`s app. Good desktop version too.
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