PSA: Facebook Buys GIPHY
Mitchell Broussard for MacRumors:
Facebook today announced that it has acquired the popular GIF sharing platform GIPHY. […]
The sum of the GIPHY acquisition by Facebook is reportedly around $400 million, according to Axios.
Terrific. It’s curious though, isn’t it? Why would Facebook pay $400M to acquire a service that just sends gifs?
Of course Giphy is going to retain its own brand. If they renamed it to “Facebook Tracking Pixels”, usage might drop off. Think about all the messaging apps that don’t offer Facebook integration for security/privacy reasons […], where Giphy images appear. You know, like Apple’s Messages. Well, now Facebook has tracking pixels in them.
Ah, that’s why. Not sure what tracking pixels are? Spoiler alert, they’re bad news. A lot of emails have them as well, and you should do what you can to avoid them.
Check out this great gif keyboard, aptly named “GIF Keyboard”.