Buying Giphy Gives Facebook a New Window Into Its Rivals

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.To revisit this article, select My⁠ ⁠Account, then View saved stories.Louise Matsakis Facebook announced Friday it was acquiring Giphy, a leading service for making and sharing GIFs that will now be part of Instagram, a leading service for making and sharing photos. Founded in 2013 as a search engine for GIFs, Giphy soon expanded to tools that enabled millions of internet users to seamlessly embed the short animations on sites like Facebook and Twitter, helping to make “reaction GIFs” the core medium for digital expression it is today.Facebook characterized the acquisition—reportedly worth $400 million—as a way to help its millions of users “better express themselves.” “By bringing Instagram and Giphy together, we can make it easier for people to find the perfect GIFs and stickers in Stories and Direct,” Vishal Shah, vice president of product at Instagram, said in the announcement.The news was not uniformly celebrated across the web. “Many have reached out to ask whether we should be concerned about Giphy search in Signal,” tweeted Moxie Marlinspike, one of the app’s cofounders, before assuring users that the privacy-focused messaging service already prevents “GIF search providers from receiving user data.”Within hours of the announcement, Giphy’s head of content was also on Twitter, dispelling rumors that the service was removing GIFs of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.