American social media and tech company Facebook is buying the popular GIF-making and sharing website Giphy for a reported price of USD 400 million, with plans to integrate the massive GIF library into Instagram and other Facebook apps.
According to the Verge, the news of the deal was first reported by Axios, which revealed the USD 400 million value of the deal.
Offering tools for creating, sharing, and remixing GIFs--Giphy is one of the largest GIF sites on the internet.
Facebook has already relied on Giphy's API for sourcing GIFs in its apps for years: Instagram, the main Facebook app, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp all already work with the service.
50 per cent of all of Giphy's traffic comes from its apps, with half of that coming from Instagram alone, according to Facebook.
Under its new ownership, Giphy will live on as part of the Instagram team, with the goal of making it even easier to send GIFs and stickers in Instagram stories and direct messages.
Though, for now, Facebook says that things will remain the same for Giphy users.
Instagram's VP of product, Vishal Shah said in a blog post announcing the news, "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."
Moreover, a number of services rely on Giphy's API for supplying GIFs, including Twitter, Pinterest, Slack, Reddit, and more.
While Facebook's announcement would seem to indicate that those services will still be able to rely on Giphy as they currently do, at least for now. However, there may be some added tension with those services going forward given that several of them compete directly with Facebook.
( With inputs from ANI )