The social media giant Facebook has acquired GIPHY, the popular platform for shareable animated GIF images.
GIPHY‘s API is already popular among social media networks. In the past, Facebook already uses it in Messenger and WhatsApp for GIF search ability.
Several other social networks such as Twitter, Reddit, and Slack have also relied on GIPHY‘s APIs for their GIF-related features
In a deal that costed Facebook a few hundred million of dollars, the primary goal of acquiring GIPHY is to integrate GIPHY with Facebook's Instagram platform.
As confirmed by GIPHY is a Medium blog post:
It was reported that the two companies first began talking about the deal before the 'COVID-19' coronavirus pandemic.
With Facebook finally getting what it wanted, GIPHY is to retain its own branding.
What this means, GIPHY is allowed to continue on its own to operate its library and content collection. Facebook is integrating its technology by investing further in its technology and relationship with existing API partners. For users and developers, nothing would change on their side.
"And for our API/SDK partners and developers: GIPHY’s GIFs, Stickers, Emojis, etc. aren’t going anywhere. We will continue to make GIPHY openly available to the wider ecosystem," said GIPHY on the blog post.
For Facebook, the company can finally make use of GIPHY's massive library in its full capacity, with hundreds of millions of daily users around the world that share billions of GIFs.
Adding that with Facebook's ability for tracking and marketing, GIPHY is looking forward to "make your everyday conversations more fun, more entertaining, and more you — all from our new home at Instagram."
Facebook’s record suggests that the company would eventually make all of its products to be able to communicate and share data with each other.
This is one of the reasons why Facebook faces enormous backlash over its previous acquisitions.
This GIPHY acquisition is smaller by comparison, but the antitrust regulators are already having their eyes on the tech giant. What's more, Facebook is also under continuous investigation by federal and state lawmakers.
Despite Facebook’s assurance, there are already privacy-related questions on how Facebook handles user data, and in occasions, failed to do protect them.
GIPHY was founded in 2013 with a simple goal in mind: to make communication more fun.
The New York-based company has previously raised around $150 million in funding since its inception, from firms like Betaworks, Lerer Hippeau, IVP, DFJ Growth, GGV Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Before acquired by Facebook, it had a valuation of about $600 million.
