Facebook’s recent acquisition of GIPHY: Why it matters

Facebook’s acquisition of GIPHY, a leading service for making and sharing GIFs will now be part of Instagram, a leading service for making and sharing photos. Facebook tried to buy the company back in 2015, an offer that GIPHY rejected.

WHAT IS GIPHY?

GIPHY is one of the largest Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) sites on the internet. It was created in 2013 and was the first and largest GIF search engine. The search engine has made people’s way of expression on social media more exciting and entertaining.

GIPHY provides an opportunity for people to share GIF files and offers tools for creating, sharing, and remixing GIFs. GIPHY tools enable millions of internet users to seamlessly embed the short animations on sites like Facebook, Twitter and dating apps.

BETTER EXPRESSION FOR USERS

Facebook characterised the acquisition reportedly worth $400m — nearly R8 trillion — as a way to help its millions of users “better express themselves.”

Vishal Shah, vice president of product at Instagram announced the following in a blog post.

“We see the positivity in how people use GIPHY in our products today, and we know that bringing the GIPHY team’s creativity and talent together with ours will only accelerate how people use visual communication to connect with each other. 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.”

PRIVACY ISSUES

Facebook’s track record on privacy issues raises a concern as it does not have the privacy and security credentials that most of GIPHY’s 700-million daily users expect. Facebook has suffered numerous data breaches and scandals over the years.

Facebook says “it will not collect information specific to individual people using Giphy’s API, but it will get valuable data about usage patterns across the web. Facebook’s suite of apps already made up a huge chunk of Giphy’s traffic — 50 percent.”

Facebook can now collect data from other platforms, many of them competitors, and possibly spot emerging trends. GIPHY however already has a copyright policy. Facebook said in its press release that “both our services are big supporters of the creator and artist community, and that will continue.”

WHY GIPHY MATTERS

GIPHY is a leader in visual expression and creation. It has a massive video library with hundreds of daily users that share billions of GIFs, that generates revenue via branded content. Facebook will make GIPHY highly profitable when it includes its ad sales and marketing power to the brand.

GIFs are the most dominant form of expression on the internet with every popular social app offering some form of GIF integration. A picture is worth a thousand words and a GIF lets you say so much without having to actually say anything at all.

This content has been created as part of our freelancer relief programme. We are supporting journalists and freelance writers impacted by the economic slowdown caused by #lockdownlife.

If you are a freelancer looking to contribute to The South African, read more here.