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Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

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Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#511

Post by godelmachine »

volkk wrote: 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…

Second this.

The other day I wanted to send a pic of Naomi Scott from “Aladdin” to my colleagues, but I couldn’t get even a single decent one. There was just one in which she was turning around, but that was not even a second long, so no one would had figured out who she was anyways.

Contrast this to Tenor on WhatsApp and the results are much more satisfying.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#512

Post by zaroth »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #508
artificial wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, great anaology. Pretty crazy that 2chan/4chan popularized the reaction gif.

Chans have WebM support as well! Much better format in every way!

The only thing more HN than debating the usage patterns of reaction gifs is to... veer further into discussing the file format used to share them. At least today it’s topical!

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#513

Post by TheKarateKid »

missedthecue wrote: post #356
jondubois wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a great match. They're both hype-mongering companies which add no value whatsoever to society.

FB has dramatically reduced ad spend waste. Not sure how anyone can call that valueless. Moreover, though you may be annoyed by your mother-in-law's minion memes, Facebook is a (free) vital communication tool for millions who are less privileged than you. The facebook hate really just gets out of hand sometimes.

No one denies Facebook makes good products. It’s the egregious and intentional abuse of trust and privacy, with an act now and apologize later mentality that everyone hates. And rightfully so.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#514

Post by tekknik »

Aeolun wrote: post #507
Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're on Windows, windows key + period brings up the system-level emoji picker. Just thought I'd let you know in case you weren't aware there was even such a thing as a system-level emoji picker (I sure wasn't until someone on my team told me about it).

Unfortunately I’m on mac, but maybe I can just copy the emoji from a website and paste it. It didn’t occur to me it might get displayed correctly but not be selectable.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-emoji-and-symbo...

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#515

Post by daniel_levine »

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

That's not how simple preferred works. That would be participating preferred. And I'd strongly suspect this is simple preferred, as participating preferred is exceptionally rare for Silicon Valley-type companies (it does happen though).

Investors get either the 1x or convert to common. So the most recent investors will take their 1x ($72mm if public sources are correct, which might include some shares bought by previous investors), but previous investors are likely to convert to common if their price per share of purchase is below the acquisition price. But even in your simple example, the $250mm is only split between founders and team, the shareholders who take their 1x are done prior to that point.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#516

Post by alpb »

floatingatoll wrote: post #86

Imagine how many billions of Referrer headers Giphy gets every day. Imagine all the AI training material that comes in when people try to turn a search term into an image. $400mil for a human-curated dataset that pays dividends in ongoing harvestable data over time is chump change for Facebook.

Majority of the giphy usage probably happens on mobile apps —which don’t send referer headers.

Similarly, if you use something like giphy on your Twitter posts, twitter mirrors the gifv image on their servers to avoid leaking user info to Giphy

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#518

Post by anbotero »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #491
anbotero wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally! THIS, rightgif, is exactly what at least 90% of people wanting to use. But another commenter on this very thread mentioned they pretty much just did SEO. Arrgh, hate it.

Sorry, I don’t see the other comment. Are saying giphy or rightgif did SEO? You hate which?

Look for “SEO” in this same thread, it’s the only other comment mentioning it. I hate giphy.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#519

Post by throwaway4715 »

zarriak wrote: post #452
throwaway4715 wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that Facebook shouldn't be allowed to own any product that can be shared on a competitors platform? Seems kinda ridiculous.

Yes, do you genuinely believe that they have sufficiently changed after the vast amount of data given away to Cambridge Analytica and other firms just two years ago mean they should have access to historical data? I genuinely think you should have to opt in to data sharing when a company covered by CCPA is purchased. I think you can make a very compelling case that this sale covers the sale of data from Giphy to Face…

I don't think whether they have changed affects their ability to buy Giphy.

Your CCPA point is interesting though. However my guess is the CCPA is unlikely to be used in that way as it would affect nearly every acquisition in every industry.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#520

Post by vidro3 »

basch wrote: post #67
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.

The other interesting thing about this one, is that they dont even attempt to license content do they? They dont have any content costs? 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 depe…

Giphy has dozens of people who are paid to create gifs
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