Facebook Acquires Giphy, for $400 million

Facebook Giphy: Facebook already owns some of the very popular platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram. But now it’s turning for a search engine, no it's not Google but an online GIF search engine GIPHY.

On May 15, 2020, Facebook acquired a very popular search engine GIPHY for a reported amount of $400 million. Both the companies, Giphy, and Facebook didn’t reveal the amount of the deal.

It was the news website Axios who listed the amount at which this deal was placed.

For starters, Giphy or styled as GIPHY is an America based online database and search engine through which users can share or search for short looping videos without any music. It resembles the animated GIF files.

It was founded in February 2013 by Alex Chung and Jace Coke. The idea for the business came when both of them were having breakfast together, musing on the rising trend of purely visual communication.

According to Facebook, Giphy will now be working with the Instagram team and its GIF libraries will now be integrated with the photo-sharing application along with other Facebook apps. However, the acquisition doesn’t mean that Giphy will be available to Facebook exclusively.

the social media giant people will still be able to upload GIF developers.

API partners will continue to have the same access to GIPHY APIs and GIPHY creative community will still be able to create great content

There’s a great history of Giphy’s growth - Facebook Giphy

Soon after the launch, Giphy was expanding beyond just a search engine. In 2013, Giphy users can post embed, and can also share GIFs on Facebook. The same year, Giphy also started the integration with twitter which enabled the users to post GIFs by just sharing a GIF URL on twitter. After the integration of Giphy with Facebook, half of the platform’s traffic came from the Facebook-owned apps. More interestingly out of that 50%, about 50% of the traffic comes from the Facebook-owned Instagram.

· Giphy acquired Nutmeg—a GIF messaging service in march 2015 which in turn launched a Giphy + Messanger app that integrated directly with Facebook Messanger. Giphy also joined a few exclusive apps to debut on the new platform with the expansion of Facebook messenger into facebook’s developer platforms.

· After the launching of its first-ever app, Giphy also launched its another app in August 2015.

The app was named “Giphy cam”. This new app at that time allowed its users to share and create GIFs on a social network.

Giphy is just one of Facebook’s recent investments

Giphy is not the only investment that Facebook has made recently. In fact, it is one of the investments that Facebook has made recently. On January 29, 2020, Facebook invested $21,000 in ‘The Sacramento Bee’. On February 19, 2020, Facebook invested $110 million in Unacademy. But that wasn’t just the end. Facebook also invested in ‘Tech Matter’ on April 2, 2020. On April 22, 2020,

Read More: Facebook acquired a 9.99% stake in Reliance Jio for $5.7 billion.

There are rumors which say that Giphy is removing GIFs on Mark Zuckerberg from its platform. However, within hours of the announcement, Giphy head of content was on twitter dispelling the rumors “Want to clarify that is not true as we only take down content that violates our guidelines.” he wrote. But according to Giphy users, they see a major reduction in the GIF’s based on mark Zuckerberg only.