American online social media and social networking service, Facebook, has announced that it has acquired the animated graphics startup, GIPHY.
It was reported on Friday that Facebook would integrate GIPHY in its Instagram visual social network.
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According to reports, the California-based tech giant paid $400 million, even though the terms of the deal were not made official.
A statement by Facebook said:
GIPHY, a leader in visual expression and creation, is joining the Facebook company today as part of the Instagram team.
GIPHY makes everyday conversations more entertaining, and so 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.
Revealing the relationship between both companies, Facebook said it has partnered with GIPHY for years and that the company would continue to operate its library.
Instagram vice president of product, Vishal Shah, said:
We’re looking forward to investing further in its technology and relationships with content.
GIFs and stickers give people meaningful and creative ways to express themselves. We see the positivity in how people use GIPHY in our products today, and we know that bringing the GIPHY team’s creativity and talent together with ours will only accelerate how people use visual communication to connect with each other.”
That’s why we’re thrilled to announce that GIPHY has been acquired by Facebook and is joining the team at Instagram.
Welcome to the family, @GIPHY! https://t.co/RgWErmc5Ym pic.twitter.com/8EQH5rxWKG
— Facebook (@Facebook) May 15, 2020
Instagram has revolutionized self-expression. More than one billion people use Instagram to communicate how they’re feeling and what they’re passionate about — we can’t wait to help those people become even more animated.
A blog from the GIPHY team on Friday said that GIPHY was created in 2013 to make communication more fun.
GIPHY is a platform and search engine for “stickers” and other products using the graphics interchange format or GIFs.
