Ask HN: Now that Giphy sold, what can RightGIF do for you?

#1

Post by toast76 » Tue, May 19, 2020, 3:08 AM UTC

Hi folks, I'm Alan, one of the founders of RightGIF. We originally built RightGIF as an alternative to Giphy in our own Slack teams. It quickly took off and became one of the top "social & fun" apps in the Slack marketplace (behind only Giphy itself which was the defacto first-party GIF app at the time).

It got very expensive for us to run, and we very nearly sold the app early on, but decided to keep hold of it and just add some little premium features to keep it afloat. Since then it's been running pretty close to break even. We kept it because we always had the intention of one day picking it up and getting serious about it.

Now that both Tenor (GIF Keyboard) and Giphy have sold to Google and Facebook respectively, we feel like it might be time to get serious.

What I'd love to know from the HN community is: a) do you have privacy concerns about Giphy/Facebook tracking? b) what platforms would we need to support to get you onboard with RightGIF c) are there app developers out there that would make use of our API if we made it public?

Thanks heaps!

Re: Ask HN: Now that Giphy sold, what can RightGIF do for you?

#2

Post by 1cvmask » Tue, May 19, 2020, 3:20 AM UTC

I definitely think there would developers ready to use your API.

Hope you will expand beyond Slack. We use RocketChat. But I assume the other platforms will be a priority first for you.

Good luck growing the company by the way and offering a non-FAANG alternative.

Re: Ask HN: Now that Giphy sold, what can RightGIF do for you?

#3

Post by 1cvmask » Tue, May 19, 2020, 3:24 AM UTC

What happened to gitr.io by the way?

Re: Ask HN: Now that Giphy sold, what can RightGIF do for you?

#4

Post by toast76 » Tue, May 19, 2020, 3:33 AM UTC

1cvmask wrote: post #3

What happened to gitr.io by the way?

LOL... I forgot it even existed. It was a hackathon project that never made it past being a hackathon project :) I'm glad someone remembers it though!

Re: Ask HN: Now that Giphy sold, what can RightGIF do for you?

#5

Post by Ayesh » Tue, May 19, 2020, 3:45 AM UTC

The reason why Facebook bought Giphy is not the Gifs themselves, it's the data. So I would say the privacy of search data and context would be the number one concern for anyone. It's pretty hard to find the balance between privacy, trending content, and relatable content, but it's for you to tune the knobs.

Also, if you release the API, I'd say making it a drop-in replacement for Giphy would increase the adoption. S3-compatible storage options, or Fixer-compatible APIs, etc are examples and they can help reduce the friction.

Re: Ask HN: Now that Giphy sold, what can RightGIF do for you?

#6

Post by toast76 » Tue, May 19, 2020, 3:51 AM UTC

Ayesh wrote: post #5

The reason why Facebook bought Giphy is not the Gifs themselves, it's the data. So I would say the privacy of search data and context would be the number one concern for anyone. It's pretty hard to find the balance between privacy, trending content, and relatable content, but it's for you to tune the knobs. Also, if you release the API, I'd say making it a drop-in replacement for Giphy would increase the adoption. S3…

Yeah, privacy for us has always been #1. It means we will need to monetise, but all indications are that teams are willing to pay a small amount for that privacy. We have the benefit of not wanting to get rich.

Re: Ask HN: Now that Giphy sold, what can RightGIF do for you?

#7

Post by toast76 » Tue, May 19, 2020, 3:52 AM UTC

1cvmask wrote: post #2

I definitely think there would developers ready to use your API. Hope you will expand beyond Slack. We use RocketChat. But I assume the other platforms will be a priority first for you. Good luck growing the company by the way and offering a non-FAANG alternative.

Thank you! My hope is to be able to support as many platforms as we can, or even open up the API in way that allows users to roll their own.

Re: Ask HN: Now that Giphy sold, what can RightGIF do for you?

#8

Post by foepys » Tue, May 19, 2020, 5:04 AM UTC

Considering that there are two other large tech cooperations named Microsoft and Amazon out there, would you sell RightGIF to them? Microsoft will probably be interested because of MS Teams that is currently using Giphy.

Even if you don't want to ultimately sell, you should try to get Microsoft to use your service.

Re: Ask HN: Now that Giphy sold, what can RightGIF do for you?

#9

Post by 011-video » Tue, May 19, 2020, 5:31 AM UTC

GIFs sucks. Most popular GIFs are video chunks played in loop. So reverse the process and convert GIF to video. With web app as 011.video for instance you can reduce the file size by a factor of 10 easily, just upload GIF, resize and download WebM video. Even better, for your own website use the original video chunk, play it in loops and make it clickable with HTML 5.

Re: Ask HN: Now that Giphy sold, what can RightGIF do for you?

#10

Post by toast76 » Tue, May 19, 2020, 5:51 AM UTC

foepys wrote: post #8

Considering that there are two other large tech cooperations named Microsoft and Amazon out there, would you sell RightGIF to them? Microsoft will probably be interested because of MS Teams that is currently using Giphy. Even if you don't want to ultimately sell, you should try to get Microsoft to use your service.

I know GIFs are not exactly an "important social good", but I do like the idea of keeping RightGIF independent. We definitely want to integrate with Teams of course, so there will no doubt be conversations to be had there :)