Facebook to buy GIF platform GIPHY for $400 million

• According to the company, 50% of GIPHY’s traffic comes from Facebook-owned apps, like Instagram, WhatsApp
• The blog post suggests that Facebook won’t take away access to GIPHY from other developers, at least for now

A few weeks after investing a whopping $5.7 billion in India’s Reliance Jio, Facebook is now buying Internet GIF repository, GIPHY, for $400 million. The two investments are of course not related, and Facebook says it’s going to make Giphy part of its Instagram team. Facebook didn’t mention the deal amount on its blog, the value was reported by Axios.

“We plan to further integrate their GIF library into Instagram and our other apps so that people can find just the right way to express themselves,” Vishal Shah, VP of Product at Facebook, wrote on an official blog post.

According to the company, 50% of GIPHY’s traffic comes from Facebook-owned apps, like Instagram, WhatsApp etc. Half of this traffic comes from Instagram alone and the company says by integrating GIPHY into the service, it can make it easier for users to share GIFs over direct messages, Stories etc. “We’ve used GIPHY’s API for years, not just in Instagram, but in Facebook app, Messenger and WhatsApp. GIPHY will continue to operate its library (including its global content collection), and we’re looking forward to investing further in its technology and relationships with content and API partners,” the company said.

GIPHY is also used by platforms like Twitter, Pinterest and others to serve GIFs on their platform and it doesn’t seem like Facebook will take that access away. However, by owning the GIF service, Facebook could easily choose to take such a decision at a later date and give an advantage to its own family of apps.