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Facebook Businesses

Facebook To Buy Giphy for $400 Million (axios.com) 49

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Facebook has agreed to buy Giphy, the popular platform of sharable animated images, Axios reported Friday. The deal value is around $400 million.
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Facebook To Buy Giphy for $400 Million More

Facebook To Buy Giphy for $400 Million

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  • I had noticed that Facebook's GIF search had started to suck. Now that makes sense. Giffy probably reduced Facebook's access to their program too strong arm a better price.

  • Holy shit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mobby_6kl ( 668092 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @09:39AM (#60063328)

    Four hundred million American dollars for a site for sharing gifs? Facebook really has way too much money, how they hell do you get in on this racket?

    • Four hundred million American dollars for a site for sharing gifs? Facebook really has way too much money, how they hell do you get in on this racket?

      Facebook itself is just a glorified multiuser blog. So ... who knows.

      • No, Facebook is a data farm for advertisers and social manipulators, with human livestock, disguised as a glorified multi-user blog

        and failed dating site (cause, come on, what was the point of finding old school colleages except for looking up a former love interest?)

      • Facebook itself is just a glorified multiuser blog. So ... who knows.

        Facebook's the #2 global ad platform

        https://www.emarketer.com/content/global-digital-ad-spending-2019

        Google will remain the largest digital ad seller in the world in 2019, accounting for 31.1% of worldwide ad spending, or $103.73 billion. Facebook will be No. 2, with $67.37 billion in net ad revenues, followed by China-based Alibaba, at $29.20 billion. Though Amazon has been steadily chipping away at the Google-Facebook duopoly in the US, it will be a smaller player on the global stage, with $14.03 billion

    • For 200 million daily users (Score:5, Insightful)

      by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @09:51AM (#60063410) Journal

      They could have built or bought a gif-sharing platform for $200K.
      They paid $400 million for Giphy's 200 million active daily users.

      Well, and the X million that aren't already regular users of Facebook.

      A crufty old Perl script is worth $0. You and I logging in to use comments.pl has some value. I'm curious how much Slashdot sold for. I thought it would be cool to own Slashdot, but I probably couldn't afford it.

      • They could have built or bought a gif-sharing platform for $200K.

        Could they have bought users? Facebook also had their own messaging system when they bought another messaging system. Don't be under the delusion that this is remotely about the capabilities of the site.

        • Yes they could have bought users. In fact they did. For $400 million. I think you read his post wrong, as you are making exactly the same point as the person you replied to.

          • I do wonder if Garb saw the subject line. :)

          • I think you read his post wrong,

            You mean reading just the first line is not correct? ;-)

            • That made me smile, thanks.

              We all have brain farts from time to time. The common thing on Slashdot seems to be that when one has a brain fart, one fights like hell to pretend it didn't happen, defending whatever was posted. Which tends to lead to making more and more ridiculous statements in a hopeless attempt to make it seem like the original post was "smart".

              I appreciate that you just acknowledged that as humans do, you had brain fart. Thanks for that.

              • The common thing on Slashdot seems to be that when one has a brain fart, one fights like hell to pretend it didn't happen, defending whatever was posted. Which tends to lead to making more and more ridiculous statements in a hopeless attempt to make it seem like the original post was "smart".

                What? I didn't even know my wife read slashdot, much less posted to it.

      • They could have built or bought a gif-sharing platform for $200K.
        They paid $400 million for Giphy's 200 million active daily users.

        I don't think that's quite accurate. I don't use giphy at all, but unfortunately I still get subjected to animated gifs from giphy which people place in other contexts - news stories, twitter feeds, even personal chats.

        Facebook probably sees this as a small expenditure which will let them vacuum up new tracking information which they may not be currently collecting. Those 200 million active daily giphy users aren't the target - they're the vector which Facebook will be using.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by trawg ( 308495 )

        They paid $400 million for Giphy's 200 million active daily users.

        I would add, they paid $400m so they can run their own tracking code on every user that sends - or receives - one of their images.

        I have never used Giphy services (unless I did it by accident once without realising, but I don't put animated gifs into messages), but I've had plenty of their images sent to me on a variety of platforms.

        Going forward, if I get one - Facebook know about it.

    • how the hell do you get in on this racket?

      You'll need an XT with 640KB of RAM, a 10MB hard disk, a 300 baud modem, and a CuteDomainName.com. And think perhaps about upgrading in the near future.

    • Four hundred million American dollars for a site for sharing gifs?

      Nope, $400m for a site containing a huge database of gifs and memes which are widely used in a large variety of chat and other social apps.

      You don't get money for being a simple sharing site, you get money for being *THE* sharing site.

  • How can I tell? If it is, I want it removed immediately. There is to be no Facebook garbage on my phone.

  • Giphy sucks, you can't simply share the image in most cases.

    Tenor.com 1000x faster better, simpler, and far less intrusive.

    So I guess giphy does belong with Facebook.

    • Can't you just right-click on the video*, and choose âcopy image[sic] URLâoe like normal?
      What if you disable the ability to disable the right click context menu?

      (* It's a video. Not an image. GIF is actually a (bad) video format too. And MP4 most.
        certainly is.)

      • It works to do that, but the fact they try to disable it with their bullshit means I don't use them anyway.

      • You'd think.
        In most cases, no, they disable that functionality - you have to use their "here's the direct embed link" which then always includes their giphy advert, link, and doesn't always post properly depending on the posting system a site is using.

        Some still work, but I think it's a matter of 'stuff that's slipped through or is really old' than deliberate.

  • GIPHY literally owns nothing. All of their GIFs are just pirated material other people made. I don't see how they are worth $4 dollars, much less $400 mil.

    • They have millions of eyeballs USING the pirated material, thats how.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

      I assume Facebook doesn't particularly care about any of Giphy's actual assets. I doubt the code or the data they have is worth $400 million. This is about two things: the existing user base, and the brand name. (Apparently there is an actual install base for the Giphy app. Who knew.)

      That being said, I think most people have already stopped using Giphy and moved to other sites like Tenor because Giphy is terrible. Its search is terrible, and it doesn't like to embed properly, because of course a GIF website

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Njovich ( 553857 )

      So what? Google was originally all external content. Facebook is all posted by external users. Youtube was basically mostly pirated content.

    • It doesn't need to own anything. It just needs to be something, such as the default option for social media and gif insertions in chat programs.

      Content is meaningless compared to the userbase.

  • At least Signal's gonna kill off their gif/stickers feature based on Giphy, that sucked four star general ass.

    Can somebody please generate a script that turns all Telegram sticker sets into Signal sticker sets, and lists them on a site for easy access?

  • Just out of curiosity, what is giphy's source of income, because they don't even seem to run ads on their site and I guess most people use the site like me, integrated in an app like telegram. I understand facebook is paying for the 200 million users, but what kind of data can they monetize on? search words? because this will only make they think every one wants an angry cat heart to send nudes.

    • Giphy is probably selling tracking information. Going forward, Facebook will own that information outright rather than being a Giphy customer.

  • Came here looking for lots of gifs, seriously no one?

    https://giphy.com/gifs/badcryp... [giphy.com]

  • How do you pronounce their name? G-iffy or J-iffy?

  • Pity (Score:2)

    by Tomahawk ( 1343 )

    I liked Giffy. Guess I'll have to stop using it now and find something else.

  • Microsoft has been integrating Giphy into their software (e.g. Teams). I guess this will put an end to that.

  • Another one bites the dust.

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