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Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

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Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#261

Post by NoodleIncident »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #199
joshgachnang wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use emojis a lot in Slack and texting. They can remove some accidental ambiguity in your writing, by making your intent clear. For example, the tongue out emoji can work to make sure people know you're being sarcastic.

They can also be ambiguous. Some people think "high five" emojis are actually "prayer hands". Which convey wildly different reactions to something. Told your friend your Dad was diagnosed with cancer? high five

I don't think there's a high five emoji. When I search it, I only get the praying/folded hands, and it says that it's rarely interpreted as a high five.

https://emojipedia.org/folded-hands/

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#262

Post by timdiggerm »

jcroll wrote: post #74
cecilpl wrote: post #58

Every time Facebook is buying something I feel sad and imagine Facebook like the black plague that will swallow that normal organism.

The owners of giphy don't feel the same pangs I'm sure

I mean, it worked out great for the Instagram guys, right?

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#263

Post by squnch »

scared2 wrote: post #30

These kinds of acquisitions intrigue me. what is valuation crieteria? from technical and innovation perspective, what part of it is worth millions?

The part that is worth millions is the user base. It's like asking why a famous movie actor makes so much more money than an equally skilled nobody out of acting school -- it's because people want what they already know.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#265

Post by est31 »

partiallypro wrote: post #119
nanna wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget Signal, a competitor to WhatsApp.

Does Signal have enough of a userbase for Facebook to even care about? I doubt it.

Signal MAU is probably in the low two digit million range (probably because there are no public data), while Whatsapp MAU is 2 billion as of March [1]. So Signal has maybe 1% of Whatsapp's market share.

[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/260819/number-of-monthly...

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#266

Post by zachrose »

benignslime wrote: post #224
zachrose wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever been in a mostly white office and noticed how many reaction GIFs are of black people? The term to Google here is “digital blackface”. If you bring this to more people’s attention my guess is that reaction GIFs will become less prevalent in your office.

I think that's just some form of confirmation bias you've formed, as I've never noticed that. I will say most of my offices have been multi-cultural, but even then, I've been on and led teams of white-only males that never succumbed to even posting these gifs. I guess guilting people into censoring their choices is a point of action, but I think the entire process should just be faded out. Slack admins don't need to…

Digital blackface is not my idea, nor is it something I noticed. (I am white.) Someone else explained it to me. I was probably a bit skeptical that a funny GIF of Oprah could be linked to Jim Crow, but in the historical context of blackface there are some unavoidable similarities.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#267

Post by pisarzp »

nostromo wrote: post #260
raiyu wrote: post #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

So did the last round of investors lose 1/3rd of their investment (and after waiting four years, too)? Was this a fire sale?

No, usually investors stock is preferred with 1x liquidation preference. This means they get their money back, then the rest is split among other shareholders

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#268

Post by bchanudet »

joshgachnang wrote: post #137
cletus wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I use emojis a lot in Slack and texting. They can remove some accidental ambiguity in your writing, by making your intent clear. For example, the tongue out emoji can work to make sure people know you're being sarcastic.

Emojis can have ambiguity too. My friends and have been using the eye roll emoji to signal we're being sarcastic for about 10 years. The un-animated version of this emoji looks like "I'm not really thinking what I'm saying", especially on Discord/Twitter.

I've recently a colleague who used the tongue out emoji for sarcasm and the eye roll one for, well, eye rolling with disdain in reaction to something.

The first chat discussions were then quite awkward, because when I were to write something like "You should have tested your code before deploying it... :eyeroll:", he was thinking I was openly looking down on him in front of the team.

We had to have a real discussion about it. It made me tone down my use of emojis - and sarcasm. I suppose using animated emojis (they were in MSN I think?), or GIF reactions would have made the things clearer.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#269

Post by Drakim »

tantalor wrote: post #204
calmworm wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It absolutely is cynical. Just another "If you're not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold."

While you aren't wrong, in this day and age it's not enough to simply pay. Even if you pay for something, you are still the product being sold. Why would a company leave money on the table, when violating people's privacy is profitable and there is no backlash?

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#270

Post by dijit »

yreg wrote: post #80
txcwpalpha wrote: post #17

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’m even “uncooler” than you. I wrote a bot that denigrates employees for using gifs in slack.

And that persistent dancing parrot animated emoji.

Luckily the bot ended up doing more valuable things too, but the original design of the bot was purely for abusing the colleagues on my team.

And it had the intended effect, people still joke but slack is not pegging my CPU, rendering animated images anymore.

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