In today’s news that’ll make you go “What. Wait, really?” Facebook has acquired a GIF platform for a reported $400-million. Moving pictures have never been this valuable.
In a deal that was announced on Friday, Giphy revealed that it had been bought by the internet giant and will be added to the Instagram team.
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Giphy was created in 2013 allowing users to find and embed GIFs to a number of different platforms. Instagram has Giphy integration in Stories, but the acquisition will now allow Facebook to have acute control over the moving-image platform.
That said, Giphy notes that its APIs and SDKs available to outside developers will not be shuttered.
“Giphy’s GIFs, Stickers, Emojis, etc. aren’t going anywhere. We will continue to make Giphy openly available to the wider ecosystem,” it said in the announcement.
Facebook’s acquisition comes a couple of years after Google bought Tenor, another GIF platform which also rose to prominence in the mid-2010s.
Feature image: Giphy
