Unsplash/Kon Karampelas
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If you’re a fan of reacting to your aunt’s Facebook posts with vulgar gifs, well today’s your lucky day.
Facebook announced on Friday that it would be acquiring gif library Giphy for around $400M. What’s wrong with just using gifs for free? Giphy has thrived as a service that allows users to make gifs and share them across social channels, thus contributing to the end of our society being able to successfully communicate through words.
While owned by Facebook, Giphy will join the Instagram team. I guess Zuck understands that its target FB audience might lose their minds over moving pictures. More than 100 Giphy employees have received offers to stay onboard with Facebook, while the rest will likely be spamming Zuck’s next few posts with gifs of Mister Rogers giving the finger.
Free for all
Despite the ability to lock down those sweet, sweet, gifs, the ‘Book is taking the highroad, announcing that all third party use of Giphy and API access will still be available for use. Put simply, your favorite social apps can still access Giphy’s library…for now. So your Tweets and TikTok replies will still get the digital validation you so desperately crave.
Cooler Commentary
Sure, it makes a lot of sense for Facebook to buy up a service that many of its young users love, but the timing could be better. Zuck and the Gang are already under investigation by the FTC for potential antitrust violations for its competition thwarting behavior. Previously, it had been privacy violations that had drawn the ire of the fun suckers over at the FTC.
If you’ve not been watching at home, (you were probably f*cking around on Facebook,) The big tech players like to keep an eye on small startup rivals building out cool platforms, and buy them before they can build any kind of groundswell.
As of now, no flags have been raised over Facebook’s Giphy purchase, but it could be the beginning of tech companies being verrrry careful as they move to buy up small competitors. Meanwhile, there’s no stopping any of them from throwing resources into directly copying any of its smaller competition’s functionality.
Water Cooler Talking Point(s)
💧 “If they pull the Zuckerberg drinking water gif off of Giphy, there will be hell to pay.”(AJ, The Water Coolest HQ)
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