Giphy - A Popular Website For Making And Sharing Animated Images Or GIFs Sold To Facbook

Giphy - a popular website for making and sharing animated images or GIFs sold to Facbook.

The social media giant Facebook just acquired Giphy— a popular website for making and sharing animated images or GIFs. Facebook and Giphy have not disclosed the cost of the acquisition, but according to news website Axios, the deal is placed at around $400 million.

Giphy will now work as part of the Instagram team. Its GIF library will be integrated with the photo-sharing application as well as with Facebook’s other apps, the company said in a blog post.

The acquisition doesn’t mean that Giphy will be exclusively available to Facebook. The social media giant has made it clear that “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.”

Here are five things you need to know about Giphy

Launched as a GIF search engine: Giphy was founded by Alex Chung and Jace Coke in February 2013 as a website meant to serve as a search engine for GIFs. According to Chung, the platform attracted around a million users during its first week of operation.

We’re so excited to share some news – GIPHY has been acquired by @Facebook and is joining the @Instagram team! ????

Read more here: https://t.co/U6AYQ16cEQ pic.twitter.com/ATjEY1VK3K

— GIPHY (@GIPHY) May 15, 2020

Integration with Facebook and Twitter: Soon after its launch, Giphy expanded beyond a search engine. In August 2013, the service started allowing users to post embed, and share GIFs on Facebook. In the same year, Giphy started integration with Twitter to enable users to post GIFs on the micro-blogging site just by sharing a GIF URL.

Giphy and Facebook Messenger: In March 2015, Giphy acquired Nutmeg— a GIF messaging service. It launched the Giphy + Messenger app that integrated directly with Facebook Messenger. With the expansion of Facebook Messenger into its own developer platform, Giphy joined a few exclusive apps to debut on the new platform.

Giphy Cam to create GIFs: Soon after launching its first-ever app, Giphy launched its second application in August 2015. Known as the “Giphy Cam”, the new app allowed users to create and share GIFs on a social network.

Half of Giphy traffic comes from Facebook: Since the very start, Giphy started integration with Facebook and today half of the platform’s traffic comes from the Facebook family of apps, out of which 50 per cent is from Instagram alone.