blackberry's bbm messaging service is getting a lot of buzz. blackberry stock has been on an upswing surrounding speculation that the bbm service could attract buyers ceo john chen confirmed this week he would "definitely sell" bbm if he was offerred a deal. just last week facebook shelled out 19 billion dollars for messaging tool "whatsapp". j-crew could be getting ready to go public. bloomberg news reports the retailer is working with banks for an ipo later this year. the clothing retailer is known for its famous fans, the first family. j-crew has 451 stores across the nation, and 2.4 billion dollars in annual sales. fallen celebrity chef paula deen is cooking up a comeback plan. the former food network star-- is opening a new restaurant in pigeon forge, tennessee. near the "dollywood" them park. a private investment firm is backing deen to get her career back on track after she acknowleged previous use of racial slurs. a $20 million dollar investment is going into her new restaurant which will be called "paula deen's kitchen". coca cola has

isot of study said that bbm dominant. would be typically places outside the u.s. it is strong. it is clearly an asset of blackberry. >> messaging is a basic sort of means. there is a competing messaging service called message me. they said they thought a spike in users means that people survey one it when they wanted. whateverk will happen you want to call it, two interesting. it is it does not mean the dollar will transfer. it doesn't mean $35 billion was spent over the top. it needs a win away from the carrier. the value -- it doesn't mean it went away from the carrier. the value -- we will talk about the way people are using messaging in the enterprise as well as individuals. >> blackberry also unveiled two new phones. one has the keyboard. the other is a touchscreen phone. listen. a lot of people might care less about security, but they really care about the data privacy and personal privacy. that point has not really been made well enough in the market. when i speak to people about what is the advantage of andkberry, security collaboration and communication. all of that go

i have got to get bbm scaling. i need to win more designs in the verticals. it is not just about a car. it is one that people can make money off of today. we have a big footprint on that. i think we need to win other verticals whether it is retail, logistics, or manufacturing. if we can start winning all of those applications, i think we will be much better. wearables, it is too early for me. >> what is your favorite gadget that you have? >> my favorite? >> gadget. the one that you like the most that is on the market. >> i do not know. [laughter] i'm not a gadget person. i think i am more of a serious user of technology. i think i have got everything i need. >> what do you think he means by that? he looks a little stumped there. >> it is interesting the pace of innovation. >> he is very big on cars. ford decided to go with blackberry over microsoft in cars. he thinks we will not necessarily be holding a device in the palm of our hands, but embedded in everything we use like cars and our homes. sensors will be everywhere. >> i think he is recognizing where the

to bbm because bbm is not growing at the same rate. a multiple like what vibra got, something around $8, $9 per user as oppos $42 per user that facebook paid. >> if it's $8 or $9 per user, what kind of valuation does that put on blackberry as a whole? because there is some analysis now or at least when the deal was announced that its per user value was about three bucks. >> so giving 750 million to bbm, the question is what about the patents, how much are they worth. there is some talk, people say it could be worth up to $3 billion. if patents are licensed out, they are less valuable so maybe they are only worth around $1 billion. the services business is in decline. in fact, it's been declining, the decline has accelerated over the last four quarters. it declined 35% year over year. that maybe is worth $500 million on residual basis. the big question is how much cash are they going to burn. they burned close to half a billion dollars of negative operating cash flow last quarter. with the new cfo, can he reduce the cash burn-down and h

i have to get bbm scaling. to win moreed designs in different verticals. when you talk about m to m, it is not just about cars. it is one people could make money on today. we have a big footprint on that. think we need to win in other verticals, whether it is retail, logistics, if we can start winning, medical. if we start winning all of those applications, i think we will be much better. wearables, it is too early for me. >> what is your favorite gadget? withoutg you can't be or the one you want to buy that is not blackberry. >> i don't know. i don't know. i am not a gadget person. i am more of a serious user of technology. i think i have everything i need. >> what do you think he means by that? he looked a little stumped. it is interesting, the pace of innovation and the lack of quick innovation in blackberry. john is wrestling with that. he is very big on cars. today ford decided to go with blackberry over microsoft in cars. he thinks that we are not necessarily owing to be holding a device in the palm of our hand. it is going to be embedded in like our

bbm, blackberry, 50 million. maybe, just maybe, apple, they're just buying back their own stock.n facebook was readying to buy their 10% of their market cap for whatsapp. you know what they can do, they can could halt that growth at whatsapp, make facebook one of their competitors, certain areas look is silly. if it stops whatsapp growth, maybe at some point, share holders cause it to spin out. itunes and the apps store in 2013 probably did $30 billion in sales. growing much faster than any other businesses. imessage, if they can monetize it. >> it sounds like a very unapple thing to do. >> i'm probably thinking he's going to do that himself. you know, we have seen this play out before, it seemed like it would have been made a lot of sense back when they were competing with pcs, the way the pcs got the upper hand. apple seems to be doing a very good job on their own, thank you very much. take a look at the imac pros, these things are sold out at this stage. people can't -- people can't wait to get their hands on them. i don't know if they need to do that. if they can take a look

alibaba, but blackberries bbm, one of the main competitors. ismoving? >> big. blackberries shares all oesh the place. check out what's happening. up 5% so far in the overall mart today. check on -- it's all about the acquisition of whatsapp. this deal appears to indicate value in blackberry's mobile messages system, the bbm, like you just said. stock up 5%. tyler, an interesting deal, when you look at a comparable comparison-type trade. one that may be one investors talk about. >> thank you, dominic chu. >>> when we come back, more on that serious threat warning from the u.s. government to u.s. airlines. there is apparent lay credible threat of a shoe bomber targeting passenger planes. nbc's pete williams will be with us after a short break. >>> plus, the truce in ukraine has broken. there are reports of dozens of protesters being machine gunned by police today. dozens of deaths. >>> more "power lunch" in two minutes. >>> about 24 hours ago a truce declared in ukraine nap is over. unconfirmed reports that 70 protesters may have been gunned down by police in kie

blackberry's bbm brings a more secure messaging experience, and snap chat which earlier turned down a billion offer from facebook, allows users to second each other photos, videos, and other messages that self destruct after seconds. there is also an app called avocado that markets itself to couples. all right. so what is the next big thing in chat apps? joining me this is the vice president of app, his company tracks some 400,000 apps on a daily basis. thank for being with us. we are learning about messaging apps like avocado. what is out there that catches your interest? and by the way prior to this deal would what's app struck you as the next big thing? >> hi, ali. we recently did a report covering 2013 and the mobile apps, and what we realized the social messageing platforms are really, really big. they have a large install base, and there are a lot of people using them outside of the u.s. the price tag, you never know with these things because you are buying more than just technology. but there are a lot of really interesting social messaging apps many of which you mentioned befo

we have to get the device don't properly and the service business growing and i've got to get the bbmling. on qnx where the connected car is, we need to win more design. >> he is busy. does blackberry have anything else in the pipeline? >> we have three or four different services and capabilities we are working on an over the course of the next 12 months, they will be announced. it will help productivity and collaboration and we are very excited about that. i think the potential which is tied to our enterprise focus will be huge. until we get to the point where we can showcase that potential, it's too early to think about getting $19 billion. >> that's the $19 billion facebook purchase of whatsapp. >> running a public company, anything to help our shareholders, i need to take a serious look at. today, i think we need to build a power base and build up the engagement model. >> secretary chuck hagel is trying to sell the department's new budget proposal and we will hear some of the reaction to major military cuts at the pentagon. the military may be cutting back but facebook is expandin

they have 85 million users of bbm. that adds value. could he spend this entire unit on bbm? >> running a public company, anything to help her our shareholders, have to take a look at it. we need to build up that base and deal with the engagement model. no immediate plan for john chen. he says, look, i am having to assess this. it could be beneficial to my shareholders. is a big issue for these tech companies. blackberry, given its own sort of credibility and the security blea, are they going to be a to cash in on this? >> it is is wind in their sails. he says it is like living in san francisco, nobody is prepared for an earthquake. nobody is prepared for the expense of the nsa looking at our data. everyone is getting interested in protecting their own data and privacy. he says, yeah, they are looking front and center at security. messaging -- a secure messaging infrastructure. we are the only one who has it. it is important that we showcase and use that as a differentiator into the thousands of enterprise customers. up the again, bringing messaging capability. we have the mo

they incorporated the bbm, the blackberry messaging system into the hand set device.denly you saw this switchover into all the teenagers suddenly wanted a part of being able to instant message each other and not pay for it. so they made those inroads, texting became a thing of the past and since then, it's gone downhill for them because as samsung took market share, apple took on market share before that, they lost grouped, they had to get through a big restructuring phase, as well. changes to management and now they're dealing with losses of some very big contracts, very recently t-mobile angering blackberry, one of their partners came out offering the iphone -- excuse me, offering blackberry users to upgrade to an iphone for free. blackberry denied knowledge about that. they're very anchored. but let's listen in to what john chen, the ceo of blackberry, had to say to me earlier today when i asked him about what his initial thoughts were to the facebook whatsapp deal. >> i thought it was a big price. that's all i thought. >> how do you value something like blackberry

this butlack berry is returning to their roots with a new phoneoming out with tra wheel and keyboard, bbmck berry is back. it you know making a come back, they are -- this stock up this week. neil: i think she is on something. i don't know. >> you don't like blackberry? >> i think this is a marriage made in headline. >> ford is hooking up with qnx, the vision of blackberry, they ve been in the car connectionivity stases for 1 ivit space for 10 years, that is good they were having malfunction problem with microsoft, blackberry acquired x, qnx a n years back. >> ford has 8 million cars on the road using the sink technology. there has been a lot of complains because of the number on the road. they have to fix and improve the sink technology which they had since 200 2008. neil: you might want to put a freeze on investing in retail, macy's saying that the snowy weather hitting sales har i never noticed the retail gus. with a good quarter say that the sun thank god. >> the weather was terrific, up know very soon they will not be able to blame it on winter, macy's had a decent november and decem

black berry is returning to their roots with a new phone coming out with track wheel and keyboard, bbm, black berry is back. it you know making a come back, they are -- this stock up this week. neil: i think she is on something. i don't know. >> you don't like blackberry? >> i think this is a marriage made in headline. >> ford is hooking up with qnx, the vision of blackberry, they have been in the car connectionivity stases for 1 ivity space for 10 years, that is good they were having malfunction problem with microsoft, blackberry acquired x, qnx a new years back. >> ford has 8 million cars on the road using the sink technology. there has been a lot of complains because of the number on the road. they have to fix and improve the sink technology which they had since 200 2008. neil: you might want to put a freeze on investing in retail, macy's saying that the snowy weather hitting sales hard, i never noticed the retail guys. with a good quarter say that the sun thank god. >> the weather was terrific, up know very soon they will not be able to blame it on winter, macy's had a decent novem

bbm is popular because of facebook what's app deal. neil: what is that?senger from back in the day. it is making a comeback, the stock up this week. neil: i think lauren is on something. >> you don't like blackberry. neil: i think this is a marriage made in hell. >> ford is hooking up with qnx which is a division of blackberry they have been in car business for years. this is. neil: this is not just a straight blackberry. >> they acquired the company's few years back, they know what they are doing, this is a vote of confidence for ford. >> well, ford has 8 million cars on road using this sink technology. probably more than any other automaker there have been a lot of complains because of the number on the road. road. >> it wasn't windows 8 was it, because that touch screen. >> i don't know. >> you might' to put a freeze on investing in retailing, macy's saying that snowy, frigid weather hitting retail sales hard, i never hear them say that the weather of terrorist was terrific. >> -- weather was terrific. >> macy's had a decent november and december, it w

>> bbm, the blackberry mess eng er. >> right. >> do you know what that is?>> it's the mess enger service on the blackberry. >> i've been on facebook about six, seven months. i'm figuring it out. >> do you understand how a company can be value like that when it only ploys under 100 people? >> i think i do. i mean, in a market economy, a thing is worth what a person is willing to pay for it. >> simple as that. >> yeah. yeah. soap, cars, a big company, a job. right? i mean, we take our cues from the market. and then we either let it alone or we touch it and massage it and try to make it different. i'm certainly not an expert. but yeah, i think that's how it works. >> what is your view of the whole minimum wage debate? the reason i say that now, gap has just announced they're going to increase their minimum hourly rate to $9 in 2014, 910 in 2015. president obama applauded gap. the decision would benefit 65 million workers in the u.s. two arguments about the minimum wage. walmart indicated they may follow as well. their argument is look if we do it it may benefit

>> bbm, the blackberry mess eng er. >> right. >> do you know what that is?>> it's the mess enger service on the blackberry. >> i've been on facebook about six, seven months. i'm figuring it out. >> do you understand how a company can be value like that when it only ploys under 100 people? >> i think i do. i mean, in a market economy, a thing is worth what a person is willing to pay for it. >> simple as that. >> yeah. yeah. soap, cars, a big company, a job. right? i mean, we take our cues from the market. and then we either let it alone or we touch it and massage it and try to make it different. i'm certainly not an expert. but yeah, i think that's how it works. >> what is your view of the whole minimum wage debate? the reason i say that now, gap has just announced they're going to increase their minimum hourly rate to $9 in 2014, 910 in 2015. president obama applauded gap. the decision would benefit 65 million workers in the u.s. two arguments about the minimum wage. walmart indicated they may follow as well. their argument is look if we do it it may benefit

it shows the value of bbm.l sell that off. >> coming up next, one of the largest bitcoin exchanges has disappeared, taking a whole lot of bitcoin with it. we'll have a special report on the very latest in that developing story. iwe don't back down. we only know one direction: up so we're up early. up late. thinking up game-changing ideas, like this: dozens of tax free zones across new york state. move here. expand here. or start a new business here... and pay no taxes for 10 years. with new jobs, new opportunities and a new tax free plan. there's only one way for your business to go. up. find out if your business can qualify at start-upny.com a 401(k) is the most sound way to go. let's talk asset allocation. sure. you seem knowledgeable, professional. i'm actually a dj. [ dance music plays ] woman: [laughs] no way! that really is you? if they're not a cfp pro, you just don't know. cfp -- work with the highest standard. i must begin my journey, which will cause me to miss the end of the game. the x1 entertainmen

rivals but also blackberry as 85 million people using the bbm, the free messaging service.tion, is worth $6 billion. i asked him if he would consider spending the unit out and he said i have got to. company --a public anything to help art shareholders, i need to take a very serious look at. that is a serious point. i think we need to build up that they send build up the engagement model. the point is, i think the , whichal tie to our best is our enterprise focus, it is going to be huge. until we get to the point where we can showcase that potential, i think it is too early to think about getting our 19 billion. >> that's six times bigger almost. with the growing weight that -- growth rate that blackberry is experienced in, it would take until 2019 to experience that. for blackberry, the nsa revelations have been something of a positive thing. he is riding the wave, he said. he found that in separate cisco, no one had prepared for privacy until it was too late. suddenly, everyone is back on blackberry. no one has got the security of a messaging service that we have. we could

hear what he has to say about a potential bbm ift is blackberry messenger, you do not recall if he usedt phone, a spinoff of that service. >> there are now just 18 minutes before the closing bell ♪ qwest coming from an incredibly low bar. investors are reassessing the value of the company's messaging service after the phase took's ikea billion-dollar year. marilyn -- caroline hyde. >> 19 billion-dollar valuations for whatsapp will get all rival service applications, reassessing the value of their model. among them, blackberry, instant messaging services. it already has 8.5 million users. valuation? i asked if he would consider ever spinning up that unit in the future. he said, actually, he has got to for the sake of his shareholders. qwest running a public company, anything to help holders, i need to take a serious look at it today, we need to build up that faced. potential,s, the which is our enterprise focus, it is going to be huge. until we get to the point we could showcase that potential, it is too early to think about getting to 19 billion dollars. qwest according to our calculati

at figured bbm scaling. is, ithe connected card need to win more designs and put them vertical. bit of wind in their sails at the moment. it just think what that is going to do. you have the messages there. that is showing off some of the processes there. there is a lot to do with privacy at the moment. blackberry has really tended to be the front runner in privacy and security for those that use it. we all have to see the bang for the buck in terms of products. >> thanks so much. at the mobile extravaganza. we will be that all through the day. our theme here on bloomberg surveillance this morning, securing a digital world. contain acrambles to software glitch while retail is in mortal fear of being next as a target. transparency, unheard of even three years ago. jared cohen is the cofounder of google ideas. in the hour. once again, we see what you think about all day happening. i was thunder struck by the twitter feed. the resilience of the twitter feed out of independence square in kiev. we see the geopolitics changed by digital. >> of course. ukraine offers a compelling examp

. >> steph, what would you say if they could take those 80 million users and take the bbm platform and whatsapp and other carriers could use it? >> they're not going to get $42 a member though. that's the problem. so it depends on what you want to value it at and you don't know if they're going to be able to keep these users to begin with. so i think this all has to do with 25% of the flow to short. and it's kind of a gamble at this point. you even said -- >> i agree. >> this is a speculative idea. >> let's find out who you think won that debate. send us a tweet @cnbcfastmoney. use #bull or #bear and we'll have results at the end of the show. let's go back to barcelona now. mark zuckerberg as we said had taken the stage making comments about his deal with whatsapp among other things. jon fortt's been listening in. jon, what are the headlines? >> first of all i want to get to what he's talking about as far as carriers go making this pitch particularly to carriers in emerging markets that facebook wants to work to create sort of a 911 for the web, basic services people can access. the pi

if you think of how quickly whatsapp took away customers from bbm, it is something that could leapfrogwhatsapp. >> i used facebook messenger for a long time and i thought it looked for -- worked fine. >> whatsapp is smoother. >> the interesting thing is there will never be any advertising on whatsapp, and they only charge $.99. although i don't member ever paying for it. >> evaluation means these are worth $42 billion to facebook, so we will see how they want to monetize it. mark zuckerberg says he wants the company to go on its own, he wants to row the user base. it is not to interfere and focus on monetizing, he just wants to grow the user. the biggest promise not to u.s. carriers, it is to the international carriers and what it does to texting people abroad. for example, in mexico, 90% of all instant messages in mexico are sent on whatsapp. that is enormous. think about how much money that is costing carlos slim. >> i have to remember to call at&t and text -- and cancel my texting plan. olivia, thank you for that. olivia sterns on the incredible price and valuation of whatsapp. now,

but bbm is still a service with 100 million users and messaging is the new hot service. hear about these kind of apps more and more and google and others are going to be desperate to get into the party. >> thanks for the analysis, eric, always good to hear from you, eric jackson from ironfire. to sell or not to sell, what's a.m. may be ca whatsapp may be cashing in but fiend out what snapchat ceo's said when i asked him about the future of his business. >> i think it's a little too early to say, right now we think the market is in its adolesce e adolescence, we're focusing on creating a great product that people love to use and obviously monetizing that. >> and tumblr founder david carp was happy to join the team at yahoo! after that $1.1 billion acquisition. >> i've been incredibly open-minded about the structure, the organization, the company that we're building. for me it's been about the mission, and this is an incredibly opportunity to serve that mission for a long time. >> jon fortt, are you celebrating today, you think you got in too late, too early? >> you defini

and also building new features on it and integrating bbm tool.s are very important. >> reporter: he said that blackberry's phone for indonesia is a key one to watch here. also speaking of emerging markets, facebook's head of growth is someone i caught up with here, he's a very important part of mark zuckerberg's inner circle, identify was asking him about facebook's big pitch to emerging markets carriers here to offer facebook and some other services for free which would be very good for facebook but also change out the picture in emerging markets. listen to what he had to say about the pitch to carriers -- >> let's together find the model that enables you to offer certain services for free to get people that are not currently connected to get the opportunity to be connected and then from there as their lives improve be able to afford other services and we need to do it in a way that is profitable and economically feasible for them so they can keep investing in the infrastructure. >> reporter: this is a guy you hardly ever see on tv. he is charge

ceo john chen talked to cnbc about bbm, it's blackberry messaging service and how that presents a bigtunity. cisco marking the biggest bond sale of the year. the book was oversubscribed. some are wondering where they're not using the $47 billion of cash on its books. most of its cash is overseas and they would rather borrow at low rates. and river bed tech. back to you, kelly. >> seema, thank you. despite the recent weak employment report, our next guest cites four key reasons why america is on the brink of an enormous economic growth spurt. which us a joel kurtzman. he's the author of "unleashing the second american century." joel, great to see you. >> great to see you. thank you. >> it's interesting to watch the way that publishing trends change because a couple years ago every book on the newsstand it seemed was about how there was never going to be growth in this country again, the great stagnation, that whole theme. what makes you so confident now that just a couple years into the recovery things have dramatically changed or have you always felt this way? >> well, no, i did not s