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Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

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Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#161
post #6

Congrats to giphy I guess? But I'll be honest, any time I've ever used them as an extension in slack or anywhere, and tried to get relevant gifs, I got back some really bad results. I'll never fully understand why they're so successful short of just dominating the market through sheer popularity. I remember switching our team over to rightgif and the difference was astounding given the fact that giphy has millions up…

A friend of me added support for sending Giphy animations to a school project 2 years ago. He finished that in 2 or 3 hours. The API is basically give us 1 word and we give you givs / jif's / jivs / gif's idk. I atleast I understand why developers want to use it.

For users it can be useless because they do not seam to understand multiple words and they do not have localized memes, so they for example don't understand dutch words and they don't have dutch memes.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#162
post #154

The Giphy integration that Facebook put into WhatsApp lets Giphy track who sends what GIFs to whom, so while the message is transmitted encrypted, a lot of context can be gleaned. This acquisition makes a lot of sense.

Certainly they can't claim that communication is private and/or encrypted then?

You are saying they can't lie about privacy?

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#164
post #99

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? 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.

Read the privacy policy[1]. 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/privacy-minded apps. And without implementing something like a proxy server to pre-cache/sanitize images and strip tra…

> Given that cynical viewpoint

I wouldn't even call that cynical. It's just the state of things.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#165
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought part of the "charm" of Giphy in Slack is that does give you those somewhat silly or "not exactly what I was looking for but actually this is funnier" type of GIFs. The couple of times I have tried to use it to search for a very specific GIF (like searching for a specific clip from a movie) it hasn't really worked, but whenever I use it for more general stuff like "/giphy cardio sucks" or "/giphy h…

I'd just like this trend of sending reaction gifs to end. People keep posting them in Slack all the time, but I find it about as appropriate as that brief time when all my uni teachers decided that it's hip to include rage comic faces into every other slide of every presentation. , yes I know, I'm fun at parties…

I turn off all images and gifs in slack. Makes it much more usable.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#166
Last private raise - https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/31/giphy-the-platform-for-all...

- $600MM

- $150MM raised

- $400MM sale price

- $400MM - $150MM 1x preferred = $250MM (assuming not ratchet up for selling below last preferred price)

- $250MM net to shareholders.

- 50% for preferred investor share holders

- 25% to founders

- 25% to individual contributors

- 25% of $250MM = $62.5MM

These are all just estimates

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#167
post #6

Congrats to giphy I guess? But I'll be honest, any time I've ever used them as an extension in slack or anywhere, and tried to get relevant gifs, I got back some really bad results. I'll never fully understand why they're so successful short of just dominating the market through sheer popularity. I remember switching our team over to rightgif and the difference was astounding given the fact that giphy has millions up…

I've always thought part of the "charm" of Giphy in Slack is that does give you those somewhat silly or "not exactly what I was looking for but actually this is funnier" type of GIFs. The couple of times I have tried to use it to search for a very specific GIF (like searching for a specific clip from a movie) it hasn't really worked, but whenever I use it for more general stuff like "/giphy cardio sucks" or "/giphy h…

May be it is just me. The worry that typing /giphy without knowing whether I am doing the “I am feeling lucky” version or “let me choose” version and end up embarrassing myself has kept me away from..... well I guess embarrassing myself.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#168
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd just like this trend of sending reaction gifs to end. People keep posting them in Slack all the time, but I find it about as appropriate as that brief time when all my uni teachers decided that it's hip to include rage comic faces into every other slide of every presentation. , yes I know, I'm fun at parties…

I don't mind the sentiment, but they're so visually distracting. /collapse is your friend here.

Just turn them off my default, its easier to uncollapse if you need to see something.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#169
post #34
post #19

Damnit, I turned down a follow-up interview with Giphy years ago since I didn't think they were sustainable and I had been burned by startups in the past. Shows how much business sense I have!

It happens. I turned down a job at Shazam very early on because I couldn't understand what on earth their business model was. They were recently acquired by Apple for (coincidentally) $400m. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shazam_(application) The actual start up I founded instead fizzled into administration.

Those were innocent times. When it founded it seemed like a stupid toy, and no one on the general public was talking about it's now obvious eventual use case as a surveillance tool.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#170
post #6

Congrats to giphy I guess? But I'll be honest, any time I've ever used them as an extension in slack or anywhere, and tried to get relevant gifs, I got back some really bad results. I'll never fully understand why they're so successful short of just dominating the market through sheer popularity. I remember switching our team over to rightgif and the difference was astounding given the fact that giphy has millions up…

You need to lower your standards, lowering the bar is key to happines.

1/2 joking

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