Facebook’s Giphy purchase will help keep track of competitors
- Giphy provides the same search service to many of Facebook’s competitors, including Apple’s iMessage, Twitter, Signal and TikTok
- That gives Giphy a view of the health of those platforms and how often people use them
A few months ago, the team at the money-losing GIF search engine, Giphy, reached out to Facebook. Might the social networking company be interested in an investment?
Already, about half of Giphy’s activity came through Facebook and its family of apps, which lets users accent their posts and messages with short, animated clips of crying Michael Jordans, popcorn-eating Jon Stewarts and tea-sipping Kermits.
While looking at Giphy, Facebook executives realised that they should not just make an investment – by buying the company outright, they could get something else they value: data.
Giphy provides the same search service to many of Facebook’s competitors, Apple’s iMessage, Twitter, Signal, TikTok and others. Giphy has a view of the health of those platforms and how often people use them, which is exactly the kind of insight Facebook values most, and has sought in the past.
After Giphy joins Facebook, the company will maintain those integrations, and will keep getting data from GIF searches and posts around the internet. The deal price was about US$400 million, according to people familiar with the matter.
Since Facebook does not own a mobile phone operating system like iOS or Android, it has relied on other means to understand competitors’ strengths – sometimes getting in trouble in the process.