Maya Robertson
Social media giant Facebook has acquired the popular gif platform Giphy for $400 million. The company now plans to integrate it with Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.
Founded in 2013 by Alex Chung, Jace Cooke and Henry Lockwood, Giphy is now one of the most popular gif platforms with more than 700 million daily users. For several years, Facebook and Twitter users have been able to access its rich library and share gifs from their accounts with a single click. As a result, gifs have become one of the most popular trends in social media.
In fact, 50% of Giphy’s traffic comes from Facebook, and the social media giant had been planning to acquire this platform for a long time. These two companies had some negotiations in 2015 but Facebook was rejected back then.
It looks like Facebook finally reached its goal. A few days ago, the company announced its acquisition of Giphy by posting a blog post. It did not share much info about the deal but paid $400 million for the purchase, according to Axios.
A lot of people in our community already know and love GIPHY. In fact, 50% of GIPHY’s traffic comes from the Facebook family of apps, half of that from Instagram alone. By bringing Instagram and GIPHY together, we can make it easier for people to find the perfect GIFs and stickers in Stories and Direct. Both our services are big supporters of the creator and artist community, and that will continue. Together, we can make it easier for anyone to create and share their work with the world.
Vishal Shah, VP of Product at Instagram
Facebook Welcomes Giphy
The company is now planning to integrate Giphy with Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. It also stated in the blog post that Giphy users are still able to use the platform as before.
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