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Showing posts from April 6, 2014

Nigeria Surpasses South Africa as Africa’s Biggest Economy

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(Reuters) – Nigeria has overtaken South Africa as Africa’s largest economy after a rebasing calculation almost doubled its gross domestic product to more than $500 billion, data from the statistics office showed on Sunday. GDP for 2013 in Africa’s top oil producer was 80.22 trillion naira, or $509.9 billion, the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics said, up from the 42.3 trillion estimated before the rebasing. The new figure shrank Nigeria’s debt-to-GDP ratio to 11 percent for 2013, against 19 percent in 2012, statistics chief Yemi Kale told reporters in the capital of Abuja. Most governments overhaul GDP calculations every few years to reflect changes in output, but Nigeria had not done so since 1990, so sectors such as e-commerce, mobile phones and its prolific “Nollywood” film industry – now worth 1.4 percent of GDP, Kale said – had to be factored in to give a better picture. Growing attention from foreign investors was forcing Nigeria to more accurately calculate its statistics, in

Mark Zuckerberg Cut His Salary to $1

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In 2013, Zuck only earned a buck. Going by salary at least, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg earned just $1 for the year, according to a regulatory filing released on Monday. In Silicon Valley, though, earning a token salary is a sure sign that you’ve made it. Other $1-per-year men have included Apple’s Steve Jobs and the Google guys — Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Like those tech luminaries, Zuckerberg owns a substantial stake in his company, making a salary irrelevant. Nevertheless, Zuckerberg has collected a decent salary before — in 2012, he made $503,205. Overall, Zuckerberg made $653,165 last year versus $1.99 million in 2012. The money went largely to fund private planes and his security program, according to the filing. The 29 year-old Zuckerberg’s wealth is estimated at $27 billion. He also owns 61.6% of voting power in the company, giving him carte blanche to forge ahead with deals like the $19 billion pending WhatsApp acquisition and last week’s $2 billion proposed takeover

64 Billion Messages Sent on Whatsapp on a Single Day This Week

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The mobile messaging platform WhatsApp is getting more popular. The company announced via its Twitter account Monday night that it processed a record 64 billion messages in a single day recently. The total was comprised of 20 billion messages sent by users and 44 billion received. That’s up significantly from the last publicly disclosed figure of 54 billion messages (18 billion sent, 36 billion received) processed on New Year’s Eve 2013. Facebook agreed to pay $19 billion for WhatsApp in February because CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks the messaging app can grow from its current 450 million monthly users to 1 billion users within a few years. The companies said WhatsApp was adding 1 million new users each day at the time of its purchase. Clearly it’s still growing at a healthy clip. The figures also show that WhatsApp is increasingly being used for group discussions. On New Year’s Eve, a WhatsApp user sent a message to two people on average. On the new record day, people sent messages