Facebook Buys GIPHY for $400 million
Social media platform Facebook, already the owner of Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus, has acquired GIPHY, a leading service for making and sharing GIFs, in a deal worth US$ 400 million, according to Axios. The massive GIF library will be integrated into Instagram, but the company said it will continue to make its APIs (which are used by TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Slack, Reddit, Tinder, Apple, and Signal, to name a few), stickers, and emojis available to the "wider ecosystem."
Facebook has been in the hot water over its previous purchases, and it's likely this acquisition will attract more scrutiny. It's worth noting that Google made a similar move not long ago with its acquisition of GIF search engine Tenor in 2018. But given Facebook's plans for a broader cross-communication across its ecosystem of apps, the purchase of GIPHY should be seen as it what it is: getting hold of another rich source of data that's disguised as a cash grab.
Facebook's suite of apps already makes up a huge chunk of GIPHY's traffic — 50 percent, per the company — but the purchase gives it an opportunity to collect data from its rivals (via the APIs) and spot emerging trends, e.g. a GIF that's going viral on Twitter, and make exclusive GIFs that cater to its apps, luring (and retaining) more users. Remember the snapchatification of Facebook? Or its use of Onavo VPN to glean metrics about app usage (i.e. how users engage with other social platforms) in order to make buying decisions?
"Onavo data from April 2013 showed that WhatsApp was heavily outpacing Facebook Messenger on mobile in certain areas. Another newly released confidential chart shows that WhatsApp was sending 8.2 billion messages a day compared to Facebook Messenger's (on mobile) 3.5 billion." Five months after acquiring Onavo in October 2013, Facebook bought WhatsApp for US$ 19 billion.
Viewed in that light, this data-rich acquisition more than amounts to a simple deal: It's yet another reminder of how Facebook's family of apps have become unavoidable online, highlighting once again the company's long history of snapping up anything that remotely comes close to threaten its dominance or be worth integrating into the giant social machinery that's Facebook.
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| GIPHY joins Facebook's Instagram (Image: Facebook) |
Facebook's suite of apps already makes up a huge chunk of GIPHY's traffic — 50 percent, per the company — but the purchase gives it an opportunity to collect data from its rivals (via the APIs) and spot emerging trends, e.g. a GIF that's going viral on Twitter, and make exclusive GIFs that cater to its apps, luring (and retaining) more users. Remember the snapchatification of Facebook? Or its use of Onavo VPN to glean metrics about app usage (i.e. how users engage with other social platforms) in order to make buying decisions?
"Onavo data from April 2013 showed that WhatsApp was heavily outpacing Facebook Messenger on mobile in certain areas. Another newly released confidential chart shows that WhatsApp was sending 8.2 billion messages a day compared to Facebook Messenger's (on mobile) 3.5 billion." Five months after acquiring Onavo in October 2013, Facebook bought WhatsApp for US$ 19 billion.
Viewed in that light, this data-rich acquisition more than amounts to a simple deal: It's yet another reminder of how Facebook's family of apps have become unavoidable online, highlighting once again the company's long history of snapping up anything that remotely comes close to threaten its dominance or be worth integrating into the giant social machinery that's Facebook.
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