Facebook Did Not Acquire Giphy For User Data, States Instagram Head Adam Mosseri

The chief of Facebook-owned Instagram, Adam Mosseri stated that buying Giphy was not all about getting user data. He stated on Monday that Facebook acquired Giphy, an animated-gif company for $400 million. The Giphy is a library of animated gifs that can be integrated with other applications, and various companies Twitter, Apple, and Slack have built Giphy into their respective applications. The acquisition of Giphy was not about to acquire the user data of Giphy, Mosseri says. Facebook bought the company for $400 million on Friday and announced that it would integrate the animated-gif company into its Instagram app.

Mosseri posted a series of tweets on Monday regarding this aspect. In one of his tweets, Mosseri said that the company acquired Giphy because this animated-gif company is a great service for users that needed a home. He stated that Giphy has an expressive content creator community, full stop.

Mosseri claimed that he was the sponsor of the deal in which Facebook acquired Giphy for $400 million. He said that acquiring user data was not the motivation, and Facebook was not focusing on acquiring Giphy’s user data.

Mosseri while explaining his point stated that most of the companies that tap into the wide library of gifs featured on Giphy’s website, use proxies and VPNs to limit the amount of data Giphy can access. Mosseri states that Giphy’s user data can further help Facebook-owned Instagram to understand what type of topics are trending across the world among users. This means that Giphy’s user data can only help Instagram to understand the trending topics among users.

However, Mosseri admitted in a tweet that Giphy’s user data can be a little helpful for Instagram. He stated in a tweet that yes, Giphy’s user data is valuable. However he also explained that the data is not enough, and stated in the tweet that Giphy has little user data. We can say that Instagram is not primarily focusing on Giphy’s user data, and the aim of the acquisition was to provide Giphy a home.


Instagram collaborated with Giphy back in the year 2018. Facebook-owned Instagram has been a key partner to the animated-gif company, Giphy since January 2018. The two companies at a deal back in 2018 and it was decided in the deal that Instagram Stories would feature Giphy’s animated gifs. The partnership allowed Instagram users to add Giphy’s animated gifs in their Instagram Stories. With the new feature, Instagram users were able to include background-less Giphy’s animated gifs in their Stories which made Instagram Stories more fun for the users. Both the companies developed a sticker engine containing a huge library of Gifs.


Photo: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Wired

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