7 ms·

Giphy plans to build a real business

61 points by okfine 9y ago

geetfun 9y ago
The service is cute. No doubt about it. All the best to the team to find a way to monetize, however. Seems like the advertising route may be the most promising.
maxaf 9y ago
There are VC-funded startups that fulfill a semi-real need, but lack any potential to become a real business. "Advertising" isn't a business model; it's a crutch one reaches for when an existing business isn't financially sustainable on its own. Giphy should be an open source library or app, or perhaps a community-supported site, that people would use on occasion. Expecting it to drive traffic that justifies a VC-scale investment will only dilute a generally useful service and cause it to fall by the wayside when the VCs pull out.
- ben_jones 9y ago
  True it would be probably be better. But we live in a culture that glorifies the slick salesman who pulls himself up by his bootstraps. Think Leonardo DiCaprio in Wolf of Wall Street. This is going to continue to happen with a large host of products. And the very same community we are currently posting in helped build it.
- sjg007 9y ago
  I mean imgur is the pioneer in this space... advertising seems like a fine business.
  - plorkyeran 9y ago
    Imgur is not even remotely the pioneer. They're the most recent in a long line of image hosts that built up a userbase with a simple functional website, followed by sacrificing that to be able to serve ads.
- jdc0589 9y ago
  while I agree that "advertising isn't a business model", truly accepting that means accepting that the majority of the Internet is broken and will fail.
  - tomascot 9y ago
    I think Google and Facebook depend on advertising
    - CharlesW 9y ago
      Google (Alphabet) and Facebook are internet advertising. http://image-store.slidesharecdn.com/f0a87be0-b176-4d80-ae8f-85283473f317-original.png http://image-store.slidesharecdn.com/f0a87be0-b176-4d80-ae8f...
    - jdc0589 9y ago
      thats the point. If advertising is a failing/bad business model, you are betting against them.
- _pius 9y ago
  "Advertising" isn't a business model; it's a crutch one reaches for when an existing business isn't financially sustainable on its own. Advertising is absolutely a business model; it funds not only most of what you see on the internet, but much of what you watch on TV. Now is it the best business model for every company? Obviously not.
- paulddraper 9y ago
  > "Advertising" isn't a business model Someone alert Larry and Sergey, right away!
indescions_2017 9y ago
Despite Giphy's broad distribution network, it doesn't seem that Gif Artists can be compensated for their labor in the way Youtube Creators can. Nor would a watermarked Gif Ad, like the one I just saw for Netflix's "War Machine" provide much more than what amounts to CDN hosting fees for Giphy's platform. Minus any content licensing. Hiring and developing Gif talent, building a Creators' Studio and marketing any resulting new IPs falls into the same conundrum: endusers copy, share and consume Gif images freely. As for mobile ads, its the engagement, such as redeeming a Memorial Day promotion code for Lyft, that is monetized. Not the content. We could hypothesize and analyze the remaining possible revenue models but unless Gifs can somehow be transmuted into some sort of cryptocurrency or other store of value, I am just having a hard time wrapping my head around this one. How do you build Paywalls for Gifs? And aren't Snap and Insta Stories the new "micro reality entertainment" channels? Wishing Alex and co. best of luck!
- sjg007 9y ago
  You want to use apps/mobile as much as possible to control the experience.
  - eon1 9y ago
    Giphy is mostly used to host content to be posted on third party sites. An upload app would be useful but by no means crucial, and nowhere near as trafficked as the content itself.
- intoverflow2 9y ago
  Did the maths a while back, the amount of money they've spent commissioning GIFs from artists for their Studio program is a small fraction that Electric Objects has spent.
- sjg007 9y ago
  They can do demographic tracking, brand tracking and other retargeting type advertising.
yeukhon 9y ago
I think advertisement and licensing/subscription are the way go along with providing a motion recognition engine. They have gifs which are basically frames of motions. Wouldn't be good to have a search engine tells you which movie this gif was based on, an anotation like genius for explaining memes and slangs?
puranjay 9y ago
IMO Giphy has raised far too much money to ever be a viable business.
dredmorbius 9y ago
Giphy's among numerous sites I've blocked at the domain level because the principle use is to create an annoyance: animations which cannot otherwise be blocked or stopped, frequently used to directly annoy those who've stated that they don't care for such things. Aside: two of the biggest blow-ups I've seen in social media have been between those who don't, and do, like animations. Go figure. Unless and until user tools (e.g., browsers) put this control directly in users' hands, I don't see the situation improving.
anilgulecha 9y ago
I figure they have good revenue from whatsapp integration, but can't let their business be held ransom by a large customer.
breakingcups 9y ago
Giphy is the slowest, buggiest site I sometimes have the displeasure of using. Unusable on mobile if you ever get linked to it, the search is mostly useless and results are irrelevant. Loading an actual gif takes ages. Just giving stuff away for free and expecting to be able to slap on a business model later just seems like a recipe for failure in general, only very few companies manage to survive, let alone thrive, with that start.
ishi 9y ago
Go to https://giphy.com/ https://giphy.com/ and take a look. Does this random collection of animated images give the impression of a service worth 600 million dollars? It's just fluff, it doesn't solve any real-world problem, how on earth would any VC be brave enough to invest $150m in this juvenile idea?
- chii 9y ago
  The same reason that they would use to invest in a platform which allows only 140 characters to be posted.
- NietTim 9y ago
  Because we're in a bubble
- vesche 9y ago
  I think there's interest because people are starting to communicate (express emotions, ideas, thoughts, etc) with each other using gifs/media more and more. Having a service that categorizes and easily serves this method of complex communication could be of interest. I'm not saying 600m, but that's my line of thinking. It's really interesting, and also when I began to feel old. Snapchat filters, the popularity of livestreaming, 50% or more of message stream being gifs, etc.
- bluejekyll 9y ago
  Isn't entertainment reason enough? And the problem they are solving is to allow others to send memes that are unique and funny or otherwise entertaining given a simple search string. It's not sending someone to the moon, but it's also not worthless. The system itself would benefit from hard technical solutions as well. Facial recognition in gifs; understanding context in a picture... you may see it as a waste, but it may also lead to discovery some new CS techniques for these things. I'm not necessarily saying they can show a value of 600m, but I would just dismiss the whole idea either.
  - bunderbunder 9y ago
    Sure, but they don't even do the gif search all that well. I tend to go just about anywhere else to hunt for gifs. When I go to giphy, my computer slows to a crawl and the fan starts blasting on high as a result of the webpage trying to immediately load way. too. many. animated gifs all at once. And I wouldn't even dream of going there when I'm using my cell phone's data plan; a single page load would probably chew through a couple bucks' worth of my monthly allotment. Other sites (Google image search, for example) let me look at a single frame static preview, and only look at the animated versions of the gifs that look promising. That works quite a bit better for me. It's even faster, since it's hard to browse anything when your browser's become unresponsive. They may have captured the hearts of some segments of the market, but things like that leave me thinking they've got a long way to go before wider appeal is a realistic possibility. Meanwhile, challengers are sprouting like mushrooms.
planetjones 9y ago
Giphy employs 70 people. This I find an astonishing high number. It also seems that they are partnered with netflix to automatically create gifs from their content; this is interesting. But what about content providers who aren't so happy about unauthorized clips being created of their content - I would have thought giphy is a copyright disaster, should owners assert their rights.
- ambulancechaser 9y ago
  > But what about content providers who aren't so happy about unauthorized clips There is no way that netflix will jeopardize their distribution licenses for a few gifs. Anything that comes from it is no doubt cleared and above board.
  - jnty 9y ago
    I think they mean all the other content providers, besides Netflix, whose content is on Giphy.
- throwaway91111 9y ago
  DMCAing a gif off the internet has got to be near impossible.
geekme 9y ago
They have a search API with a public key https://github.com/Giphy/GiphyAPI https://github.com/Giphy/GiphyAPI with limits. I used it in one of my apps. Pretty cool stuff.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jasonlfunk 9y ago
How is a business that isn't profitable and has no business model for revenue worth 600 million dollars? How are these valuations actually done?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- coralreef 9y ago
  Investor demand for shares.
agumonkey 9y ago
I find non video gif pretty much shocking. So much bandwidth wasted. I hope they don't do that anymore.

61 points by okfine 9y ago

The service is cute. No doubt about it. All the best to the team to find a way to monetize, however. Seems like the advertising route may be the most promising.

maxaf 9y ago

There are VC-funded startups that fulfill a semi-real need, but lack any potential to become a real business. "Advertising" isn't a business model; it's a crutch one reaches for when an existing business isn't financially sustainable on its own. Giphy should be an open source library or app, or perhaps a community-supported site, that people would use on occasion. Expecting it to drive traffic that justifies a VC-scale investment will only dilute a generally useful service and cause it to fall by the wayside when the VCs pull out.

ben_jones 9y ago
True it would be probably be better. But we live in a culture that glorifies the slick salesman who pulls himself up by his bootstraps. Think Leonardo DiCaprio in Wolf of Wall Street. This is going to continue to happen with a large host of products. And the very same community we are currently posting in helped build it.
sjg007 9y ago
I mean imgur is the pioneer in this space... advertising seems like a fine business.
- plorkyeran 9y ago
  Imgur is not even remotely the pioneer. They're the most recent in a long line of image hosts that built up a userbase with a simple functional website, followed by sacrificing that to be able to serve ads.
jdc0589 9y ago
while I agree that "advertising isn't a business model", truly accepting that means accepting that the majority of the Internet is broken and will fail.
- tomascot 9y ago
  I think Google and Facebook depend on advertising
  - CharlesW 9y ago
    Google (Alphabet) and Facebook are internet advertising. http://image-store.slidesharecdn.com/f0a87be0-b176-4d80-ae8f-85283473f317-original.png http://image-store.slidesharecdn.com/f0a87be0-b176-4d80-ae8f...
  - jdc0589 9y ago
    thats the point. If advertising is a failing/bad business model, you are betting against them.
_pius 9y ago
"Advertising" isn't a business model; it's a crutch one reaches for when an existing business isn't financially sustainable on its own. Advertising is absolutely a business model; it funds not only most of what you see on the internet, but much of what you watch on TV. Now is it the best business model for every company? Obviously not.
paulddraper 9y ago
> "Advertising" isn't a business model Someone alert Larry and Sergey, right away!

indescions_2017 9y ago

Despite Giphy's broad distribution network, it doesn't seem that Gif Artists can be compensated for their labor in the way Youtube Creators can. Nor would a watermarked Gif Ad, like the one I just saw for Netflix's "War Machine" provide much more than what amounts to CDN hosting fees for Giphy's platform. Minus any content licensing. Hiring and developing Gif talent, building a Creators' Studio and marketing any resulting new IPs falls into the same conundrum: endusers copy, share and consume Gif images freely. As for mobile ads, its the engagement, such as redeeming a Memorial Day promotion code for Lyft, that is monetized. Not the content. We could hypothesize and analyze the remaining possible revenue models but unless Gifs can somehow be transmuted into some sort of cryptocurrency or other store of value, I am just having a hard time wrapping my head around this one. How do you build Paywalls for Gifs? And aren't Snap and Insta Stories the new "micro reality entertainment" channels? Wishing Alex and co. best of luck!

sjg007 9y ago
You want to use apps/mobile as much as possible to control the experience.
- eon1 9y ago
  Giphy is mostly used to host content to be posted on third party sites. An upload app would be useful but by no means crucial, and nowhere near as trafficked as the content itself.
intoverflow2 9y ago
Did the maths a while back, the amount of money they've spent commissioning GIFs from artists for their Studio program is a small fraction that Electric Objects has spent.
sjg007 9y ago
They can do demographic tracking, brand tracking and other retargeting type advertising.

yeukhon 9y ago

I think advertisement and licensing/subscription are the way go along with providing a motion recognition engine. They have gifs which are basically frames of motions. Wouldn't be good to have a search engine tells you which movie this gif was based on, an anotation like genius for explaining memes and slangs?

puranjay 9y ago

IMO Giphy has raised far too much money to ever be a viable business.

dredmorbius 9y ago

Giphy's among numerous sites I've blocked at the domain level because the principle use is to create an annoyance: animations which cannot otherwise be blocked or stopped, frequently used to directly annoy those who've stated that they don't care for such things. Aside: two of the biggest blow-ups I've seen in social media have been between those who don't, and do, like animations. Go figure. Unless and until user tools (e.g., browsers) put this control directly in users' hands, I don't see the situation improving.

anilgulecha 9y ago

I figure they have good revenue from whatsapp integration, but can't let their business be held ransom by a large customer.

breakingcups 9y ago

Giphy is the slowest, buggiest site I sometimes have the displeasure of using. Unusable on mobile if you ever get linked to it, the search is mostly useless and results are irrelevant. Loading an actual gif takes ages. Just giving stuff away for free and expecting to be able to slap on a business model later just seems like a recipe for failure in general, only very few companies manage to survive, let alone thrive, with that start.

ishi 9y ago

Go to https://giphy.com/ https://giphy.com/ and take a look. Does this random collection of animated images give the impression of a service worth 600 million dollars? It's just fluff, it doesn't solve any real-world problem, how on earth would any VC be brave enough to invest $150m in this juvenile idea?

chii 9y ago
The same reason that they would use to invest in a platform which allows only 140 characters to be posted.
NietTim 9y ago
Because we're in a bubble
vesche 9y ago
I think there's interest because people are starting to communicate (express emotions, ideas, thoughts, etc) with each other using gifs/media more and more. Having a service that categorizes and easily serves this method of complex communication could be of interest. I'm not saying 600m, but that's my line of thinking. It's really interesting, and also when I began to feel old. Snapchat filters, the popularity of livestreaming, 50% or more of message stream being gifs, etc.
bluejekyll 9y ago
Isn't entertainment reason enough? And the problem they are solving is to allow others to send memes that are unique and funny or otherwise entertaining given a simple search string. It's not sending someone to the moon, but it's also not worthless. The system itself would benefit from hard technical solutions as well. Facial recognition in gifs; understanding context in a picture... you may see it as a waste, but it may also lead to discovery some new CS techniques for these things. I'm not necessarily saying they can show a value of 600m, but I would just dismiss the whole idea either.
- bunderbunder 9y ago
  Sure, but they don't even do the gif search all that well. I tend to go just about anywhere else to hunt for gifs. When I go to giphy, my computer slows to a crawl and the fan starts blasting on high as a result of the webpage trying to immediately load way. too. many. animated gifs all at once. And I wouldn't even dream of going there when I'm using my cell phone's data plan; a single page load would probably chew through a couple bucks' worth of my monthly allotment. Other sites (Google image search, for example) let me look at a single frame static preview, and only look at the animated versions of the gifs that look promising. That works quite a bit better for me. It's even faster, since it's hard to browse anything when your browser's become unresponsive. They may have captured the hearts of some segments of the market, but things like that leave me thinking they've got a long way to go before wider appeal is a realistic possibility. Meanwhile, challengers are sprouting like mushrooms.

planetjones 9y ago

Giphy employs 70 people. This I find an astonishing high number. It also seems that they are partnered with netflix to automatically create gifs from their content; this is interesting. But what about content providers who aren't so happy about unauthorized clips being created of their content - I would have thought giphy is a copyright disaster, should owners assert their rights.

ambulancechaser 9y ago
> But what about content providers who aren't so happy about unauthorized clips There is no way that netflix will jeopardize their distribution licenses for a few gifs. Anything that comes from it is no doubt cleared and above board.
- jnty 9y ago
  I think they mean all the other content providers, besides Netflix, whose content is on Giphy.
throwaway91111 9y ago
DMCAing a gif off the internet has got to be near impossible.

geekme 9y ago

They have a search API with a public key https://github.com/Giphy/GiphyAPI https://github.com/Giphy/GiphyAPI with limits. I used it in one of my apps. Pretty cool stuff.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jasonlfunk 9y ago

How is a business that isn't profitable and has no business model for revenue worth 600 million dollars? How are these valuations actually done?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
coralreef 9y ago
Investor demand for shares.

agumonkey 9y ago

I find non video gif pretty much shocking. So much bandwidth wasted. I hope they don't do that anymore.