<story><title>Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M</title><url>https://www.axios.com/scoop-facebook-to-buy-giphy-for-400-million-4a75a359-833b-484d-b15b-87e94d3de017.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dumbfounder</author><text>Congrats to Giphy, but honestly it baffles me they are worth this much money. Do they actually bring in decent revenue, or was this all about eyeballs? Is this content even decently monetizable?&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am the jaded creator of Twicsy, a Twitter picture engine with many millions of visitors over its lifetime, and I apparently missed the boat on this trends and had to shut it down.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cosmie</author><text>Read the privacy policy[1].&lt;p&gt;Think of Giphy images as a giant, organically shared version of web tracking software. Which complements the coverage of the FB Pixel[2] well, as it worms its way into privacy-conscious areas they might not have FB Pixel coverage such as private communications and security&amp;#x2F;privacy-minded apps. And without implementing something like a proxy server to pre-cache&amp;#x2F;sanitize images and strip tracking identifiers in both directions, it&amp;#x27;s a tracking vector that&amp;#x27;s hard to keep out of your app without introducing user friction.&lt;p&gt;Given that cynical viewpoint, the valuation makes a ton of sense.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;support.giphy.com&amp;#x2F;hc&amp;#x2F;en-us&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;360032872931-GIPHY-Privacy-Policy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;support.giphy.com&amp;#x2F;hc&amp;#x2F;en-us&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;360032872931-GIP...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.facebook.com&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;help&amp;#x2F;742478679120153?id=1205376682832142&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.facebook.com&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;help&amp;#x2F;742478679120153?id=12...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M</title><url>https://www.axios.com/scoop-facebook-to-buy-giphy-for-400-million-4a75a359-833b-484d-b15b-87e94d3de017.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dumbfounder</author><text>Congrats to Giphy, but honestly it baffles me they are worth this much money. Do they actually bring in decent revenue, or was this all about eyeballs? Is this content even decently monetizable?&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am the jaded creator of Twicsy, a Twitter picture engine with many millions of visitors over its lifetime, and I apparently missed the boat on this trends and had to shut it down.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>basch</author><text>The other interesting thing about this one, is that they dont even attempt to license content do they?   They dont have any content costs?&lt;p&gt;Theres been this fake (steal) it till you make it, wild west approach to growth.  Youtube, Buzzfeed, Imgur.  You just host anybodys content regardless of if the poster is the owner, and once you get to scale, then you handle copyright and creating your own content so you arent as dependent on external creators.&lt;p&gt;But in Giphys case, they never have to take the extra step.  Because they are so short, they are much more likely to pass fair use, and they can just host anybodys anything, barring some illegal fringes, without having to pay for the rights.</text></comment>