Facebook acquires Giphy animation search engine to integrate Instagram

The world's largest and most popular social media giant, Facebook, has acquired GIF search engine Giphy. According to a report by Axios, Facebook paid $400 million to buy Giphy. The company has said that in the future, it plans to integrate Giphy with Instagram.

Since so many Instagram users use GIFs in their stories and chats, Facebook says integrating Giphy with Instagram will help those users find the best way to express their emotions.

Recently, the company also invested an amount of $5.7 billion in Jio telecom services in India to drive the digital revolution in India.

What is Giphy?

For users of Facebook, Twitter and other social messaging sites, GIFs has become popular and is increasingly used as a form of expression. For example, instead of using the Internet slang “LOL” for “laughing out loud,” users can attach a GIF video clip of someone laughing out loud.

Giphy was founded in 2013 by Alex Chung and Jace Cooke, who decided to create a database of GIFs that could be used instead of words to express emotions. They built a search engine, compiled a database of approx 15,000 GIFs and created the Giphy website. The database and user count have grown significantly, with up to 65 million users accessing more than 3 billion GIFs each month.

For those who don't know, Giphy is a search engine that allows users to search and share GIFs. Furthermore, Giphy is also integrated with famous apps like Twitter and Slack. Apple's IMessage also has a lot of Gifs from Giphy.

What benefits does Facebook get from buying Giphy?

According to Facebook, users can still upload GIFs on Giphy despite their purchase. The same goes for the app's API partners, who will also receive the same perks. In fact, Facebook wants to strengthen the technical aspects of Giphy.

Another advantage of the Giphy acquisition is now Facebook can peek at its competitors Its messaging app on the market uses Giphy. Facebook can extract data like how often people use Giphy in other apps like TikTok, Twitter, iMessage and Slack and how they use it.

Such insights are valuable for Facebook, which focuses on promote messaging applicationsr and social media platforms. However, it is currently unclear whether Giphy will be removed from other platforms and become exclusive to Instagram.

But it makes sense for Facebook not to remove Giphy integration from other apps because this will help Facebook in the long run.

With new ownership, Giphy will be integrated with Instagramwith the goal of making it easier to send GIFs and stickers in Instagram stories and direct messages. For now, however, Facebook says that everything will remain normal for Giphy users.

Users can still upload GIFs; Developers and API partners will continue to have the same access to Giphy's API; and Giphy's creative community will still be able to create great content,” Vishal Shah, Instagram's vice president of product, said in a blog post announcing the news.

Many services rely on Giphy's API to provide GIFs, incl Twitter, Pinterest, Slack, Reddit, etc. Although Facebook's announcement seems to indicate that those services can still use Giphy as is – at least for now – there may be some more policy changes with these services in the future if That field has direct competition with Facebook.