In past years, with the various services of Facebook, the use of graphics interchange format (GIF) images has increased tremendously. Facebook is buying Giphy, a popular website for creating and sharing GIFs, keeping users in mind. Facebook has to spend 400 million US dollars for this.
Giphy is one of the largest GIF sites on the Internet, providing tools for creating, sharing and remixing GIFs. According to the technology website The Verge, Facebook plans to buy Giphy and integrate its huge GIF library with Instagram and other Facebook apps.
Facebook has long relied on Giphy’s API to encourage the use of GIFs in their apps. Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp are already associated with Giphy. According to data on Facebook, more than 50 percent of Giphy’s traffic comes from the Facebook app and 50 percent came only from Instagram.
With the purchase of Facebook, Giphy’s team will move under the Instagram team, making it easier to use GIFs and stickers on Instagram. However, Giphy users will not see any difference in usage at the moment, said Vishal Shah, Instagram’s vice president of products. He also said, As a user GIF uploads, GIFI API usage and content creation system will continue as the previous time.
Already Twitter, Pinterest, Slack, Reddit, and many more sites rely on Giphy’s API service to provide GIF. Although Facebook has said the use of Giphy will remain open for all but the questions may arise about the use of Gifi in the case of direct Facebook competitors like tham.
