Apple isn’t the only company making acquisitions this week. Facebook has confirmed a big get for itself on Friday, and a huge boost to the Instagram platform as a result.
On Friday, Facebook officially announced that it has acquired the popular GIF-sharing service Giphy. The deal is worth upwards of $400 million (per Axios), and it will see Facebook integrating the service with the Instagram platform. Of course, since Facebook is Facebook and also owns WhatsApp and runs Messenger, Giphy will have a significant presence in those apps as well.
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.
Facebook notes in the announcement today that it has relied on Giphy API for years now, and that nothing is changing in the way that its global library is accessed beyond Facebook’s products.
This is a major deal for Facebook, but the good news for the general user is that Giphy’s exhaustive GIF library isn’t going anywhere, and it will still be accessible even outside of Facebook’s own services.
Developing…