Facebook Announces Its Acquisition Of Giphy And the Integration Plans With Instagram

The world-wide popular social networking site Facebook announced on Friday, May 15th that it is purchasing the famous GIF animation-picture creating and sharing platform Giphy in a deal which is reportedly valued for a price of $400 million. It further also revealed its plans on combining the huge GIF library into Instagram and other Facebook apps. It’s so that people can find just the right way to express themselves.

Giphy is one of the massive GIF sites on the internet that provides tools for creating, sharing and modifying GIFs. Facebook for years has relied on Giphy’s Application Program Interface (API) for sourcing GIFs throughout its apps: Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. In a statement made by Facebook it said, “Giphy will continue to operate its library.”

According to Giphy and its own announcement on the acquisition, the company plans to continue its work with Instagram, but doesn’t expand on what it will bring to Facebook’s other services. “Almost 50 percent of all of Giphy’s traffic comes from its apps, with half of that coming from Instagram alone”, according to Facebook.

Giphy under its new proprietorship will live on as an integrated part of the Instagram team, with the aim of making it even convenient to send GIFs and stickers in direct messages and Instagram stories. As of now, the social networking giant claims that things will continue to be the same for Giphy users.

Third parties such as Pinterest, Slack, Reddit, Twitter, and more rely on Giphy’s API for supplying GIFs. It’s still unclear if Facebook will terminate those relationships to keep Giphy only on Facebook’s apps. Instagram in a tweet said that the third parties will still be allowed to use Giphy images.

Instagram’s VP of Product, Vishal Shah, said in a blog post announcing the news, “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.”