Yesterday, social media giant Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) announced that it had acquired GIPHY, one of the leading online repositories for GIFs, which are short looping videos that social media users use to express themselves. The plan is to integrate GIPHY directly into Facebook's Instagram team while incorporating it more deeply into Facebook's other apps. Facebook already represented about half of GIPHY's engagement, according to product exec Vishal Shah.
"A lot of people in our community already know and love GIPHY," Shah wrote in a blog post announcing the deal. "In fact, 50% of GIPHY's traffic comes from the Facebook family of apps, half of that from Instagram alone." Instagram chief Adam Mosseri also celebrated the deal on social media.
Visual expression is so important in how we communicate, and GIPHY understands that like no other. Excited to bring their creativity and talent together with ours. Welcome to the family GIPHY! pic.twitter.com/JRIQ57wdMM
Source Fool.com