Facebook has just bought the popular GIF GIPHY hosting platform. In a blog post, GIPHY announced that it will join the Instagram team.
Although both companies have confirmed the deal, they have not disclosed the amount. A post by Axios he says that Facebook paid $ 400 million to acquire GIPHY.
GIPHY's API is quite popular on social networks. Facebook already uses it in many of its products, such as Messenger and WhatsApp for GIF search. And other social networks like Twitter, Reddit, and Slack also use GIPHY's APIs for their GIF-related functionality.
In a statement, Vishal Shah, Product VP at Instagram, said GIPHY will continue to operate its library and developers will have the same access in the GIPHY APIs as before:
GIPHY will continue to operate its library (including its global collection of content) and we look forward to further investing in its technology and relationships with content and its partners through the APIs. Users will still be able to upload GIFs. Developers and API users will continue to have the same access to GIPHY's APIs. So GIPHY's creative community will still be able to create great content.
Despite Facebook's assertion, there are already many questions about privacy and how Facebook will handle user data.
Το ιστορικό του Facebook μας δείχνει ότι η company wants to share our data across all its products. We already know this and have seen it in action with consolidation του WhatsApp και του Instagram και του Facebook. Έτσι, αν και το μεγαλύτερο κοινωνικό network promises to keep things as they are for now, we should expect things to change in a few years.
