Years before Jan Koum sold WhatsApp to Facebook for $22 billion, a California court granted his ex-girlfriend a restraining order against the future tech CEO. After court documents surfaced today, Koum apologized telling Bloomberg, "I am ashamed of the way I acted."

Facebook may not like its corrosive effect on the types of news that gets shared online, but its influence is growing stronger. WhatsApp, its $19 billion messaging miracle, already sends more traffic to USA Today's sports blog than Twitter.

The fable of the dropout prodigy is so widely-told in Silicon Valley that it even came back to bite the enfant terrible who inspired it. In a new Q&A in the New York Times, Farhad Manjoo asks 29-year-old Mark Zuckerberg if he's out of touch with teens.

So, it's settled: Silicon Valley has the worst roadside billboards in the Western Hemisphere. [Photo via Sara Mauskopf]

Bas Bosschert, the CTO of Double Think, claims that hackers can access your WhatsApp database using any Android app, even after today's update. "Facebook didn't need to buy WhatsApp to read your chats," he concludes.

The corporate narrative around WhatsApp's obscurity-to-billions story centers around values. The company's founders, we're told, respect our privacy above all else—except $19 billion dollars from a company no one trusts to respect our privacy. Now one group is asking for government intervention.

On stage at SXSW, Wired's Steven Levy asked Eric Schmidt whether companies like WhatsApp lead to more inequality. Here's Schmidt's response: "Let us celebrate capitalism," he said, opening his arms. "$19 billion for 50 people? Good for them."

Ever since acquisition rumors started building in late 2012, WhatsApp—the fast-growing messaging service with serious outer-bubble appeal—seemed destined for a multi-billion exit. But how, pray tell, did Facebook decide 19 was the "magic number"? One source tells Valleywag that it began with a $250 million funding offer.

In an email this afternoon, Sean Parker, who became a billionaire solely because of his shares in Facebook, said he hadn't received questions about the unnatural disaster brewing outside his West Village home because: "I don't check my Facebook msgs that often."

In tech, as in love, things always appear more attractive when they're in high demand. According to The Information, Google devised an awkward and costly way to find out if a startup has any corporate suitors, but WhatsApp declined.

The three guys up there—the co-founders of WhatsApp and their investor—just made billions and billions of dollars. The photo was taken right after they sealed the deal. Smile! But even the people without any power at the company will walk away with possibly hundreds of millions of dollars.

The law of platforms puts boundaries on appropriate interaction between Facebook (a means for content distribution) and Buzzfeed (a content manufacturer). But, somehow, the two tech companies keep getting caught in an unholy alliance, including a little love from Facebook's $19 billion WhatsApp acquisition.

WhatsApp's 55 employees have $19 billion reasons to celebrate, including Igor Solomennikov, an iPhone developer who has been with the company since 2009. He just posted this shot of the finest bubbly Mark Zuckerberg can buy.

Put the Snapchat co-founders on suicide watch: Facebook is buying WhatsApp, a smartphone messaging service that's enormously popular around the world, for $16 billion, plus $3 billion in restricted stock units for employees, making it one of the biggest tech deals in history.