Facebook buys Giphy to integrate with Instagram

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook is acquiring Giphy, a popular website for making and sharing animated images, or GIFs, and will integrate it with the Instagram photo-sharing app.

Facebook and Giphy declined to disclose the cost bu it has been placed at around $400 million. In 2015, Giphy rebuffed a Facebook offer, choosing instead to continue integrating its products with multiple social media platforms, according to news site TechCrunch.

Giphy will become part of Instagram, the photo-sharing site owned by Facebook. Its GIF library, which can integrate with other apps, will be further integrated into Instagram and other Facebook-owned apps, the companies said.

“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,” said Vishal Shah, Instagram’s vice president of product, in a blog post.

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Giphy said in a post on blogging website it will continue to make the site openly available to the wider ecosystem. Numerous services rely on Giphy’s for supplying GIFs, including Twitter, Pinterest, Slack, and Reddit. This has raised tension as many of them compete with Facebook.

Under its new ownership, Giphy will be part of the Instagram team, with the goal of making it even easier to send GIFs and stickers in Instagram stories and direct messages.

A Facebook spokesman said Giphy’s current integrations with social platforms like Twitter, Snapchat and ByteDance’s TikTok would not change. Facebook said fifty percent of Giphy’s traffic already comes from Facebook’s apps, with half of that coming from Instagram.

The spokesman also said GIFs have no online tracking mechanisms such as pixels or cookies, a concern for privacy advocates wary of Facebook’s aggressive collection of personal data for use in targeted advertising.