Facebook Inc. is buying popular GIF-making and sharing website Giphy for a reported price of $400 million, and Axios, says the company is planning to integrate the massive GIF library into Instagram and other Facebook apps.
Giphy is one of the largest GIF sites on the internet, offering tools for creating, sharing, and remixing GIFs. Facebook and other numerous services like Twitter have 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 and according to Facebook, about 50pc of all of Giphy’s traffic comes from its apps, with Instagram contributing about 25pc
“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 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.
