Facebook grows its empire with Giphy, king of memes

Facebook is adding to its internet empire. The social media network has acquired GIF platform Giphy, which will be integrated with Facebook’s Instagram unit.

The deal was valued at $400 million, reported Axios. Giphy, which hosts a library of GIFs and serves as a GIF generator, already provided built-in search functions for the Facebook-owned apps Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, and 50% of its traffic came from Facebook apps. In a press release, Facebook said it plans to “further integrate their GIF library into Instagram and our other apps” via GIF and sticker searches in Instagram Stories and Direct.

Giphy will continue to operate its own global content collection independently, and users will still be able to create and upload GIFs on the website. Developers’ and API partners’ access to Giphy’s API will remain unchanged, and Facebook said it seeks to “invest further in [Giphy’s] technology and relationships.”