Facebook has acquired the popular GIF-making and sharing website Giphy for a reported price of $400 million. But why does this matter anyway? Since the company owns many platforms, Giphy’s massive GIF library will be integrated into Instagram and other Facebook apps.
This company owns the largest GIF sites on the internet, offering tools for creating, sharing, and remixing GIFs. Facebook has already relied on Giphy’s API for sourcing GIFs in its apps for years: Instagram, the main Facebook app, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp all already work with the service. According to Facebook, 50 percent of all of Giphy’s traffic comes from its apps, with half of that coming from Instagram alone.
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Under its new ownership, Giphy will live on as part of the Instagram team, with the goal of making it even easier to send GIFs and stickers in Instagram stories and direct messages. For now, though, Facebook says that things will remain the same for current animated app users.
“People will still be able to upload GIFs; developers and API partners will continue to have the same access to Giphy’s APIs; and Giphy’s creative community will still be able to create great content,” Vishal Shah, Instagram’s VP of product, said in a blog post announcing the news.
Numerous services rely on Giphy’s API for supplying GIFs, including Twitter, Pinterest, Slack, Reddit, and more. While Facebook’s announcement would seem to indicate that those services will still be able to rely on Giphy as they currently do — at least for now — there may be some added tension with those services going forward given that several of them compete directly with Facebook.
