Facebook Buys GIF Website Giphy And Plans To Integrate With Instagram

(RTTNews) - In a blog post Friday, Facebook said that it acquired Giphy, a popular website for creating animated graphics interchange format, or GIFs.

Pricing terms of the deal were not disclosed. Citing people familiar with the matter, Axios said the deal is valued around $400 million.

Facebook said that about 50% of Giphy's traffic comes from Facebook's family of apps, half of that from Instagram alone. Facebook has used Giphy's application program interface throughout its main Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

The company plans to further integrate their GIF library into Instagram and other apps so that people can find just the right way to express themselves. Giphy will become part of Instagram, the photo-sharing site owned by Facebook, and will continue to operate its library, Facebook said.

"People will still be able to upload GIFs; developers and API partners will continue to have the same access to GIPHY's APIs; and GIPHY's creative community will still be able to create great content," said Vishal Shah, Instagram's vice president of product, in the blog post.

"We will continue to make GIPHY openly available to the wider ecosystem," Giphy said in a post on blogging website Medium.