Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#41

Post by djsumdog » Fri, May 15, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

jcutrell wrote: post #3

The amount of nuanced information available in this dataset is incredible.

Hmm .. wonder if this is primarily a acquisition to get training data and ML devs.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#42

Post by 0az » Fri, May 15, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

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?

I'm guessing Data. Trends, among others.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#43

Post by johannes1234321 » Fri, May 15, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

scared2 wrote: post #15

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

The fact that it is embedded in tons of software and delivers information about usage and trends.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#44

Post by dumbfounder » Fri, May 15, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

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.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#45

Post by aisengard » Fri, May 15, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

tombert wrote: 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!

Unless you wanted to be acquihired into Google/Instagram, you likely wouldn't have made any money in equity. This acquisition is $200M less than their most recent valuation from 4 years ago, the investors are probably taking everything and most employee options are likely underwater.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#46

Post by CamelCaseName » Fri, May 15, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

ArmandGrillet wrote: post #13

Giphy shows good results but the search is quite slow IMO, I hope this improves in the future. If you haven't read Facebook by Steven Levy I recommend it, the book explains quite well what happened after the acquisitions of Instagram, Whatsapp, and Oculus.

> If you haven't read Facebook by...

Thanks! This is exactly the sort of thing I love to read. Got anything else you can recommend?

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#47

Post by rofws » Fri, May 15, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

The only time I use giphy is through google keyboard (yes, I send a lot of memes). I guess google will have to pay them now? Or will keyboard stop supporting giphy?

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#48

Post by loceng » Fri, May 15, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

ronnieoverby wrote: post #14

https://gph.is/g/a99MK06

I tried to find a The Social Network movie overlay with the words "Dumb fucks" on Giphy - though it doesn't seem to have it; https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/20/mark-zuckerberg...

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#49

Post by loceng » Fri, May 15, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

solarkraft wrote: post #16

whatsmyusername wrote: post #7

RIP giphy

Was it ever good?

Define good? The data's worth at least $400M to Facebook.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#50

Post by snissn » Fri, May 15, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

dumbfounder wrote: post #44

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.

They're integrated into a lot of apps and maybe even apple's OS. In addition to those integration and business relationships they probably have some sort of data sharing / ad tech thingy that's worth some money on its own.