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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 d

by 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.
- DiThi 9y ago
  Since it's integrated in Telegram as "@gif", I tried to use it many times to search for famous gifs or famous clips of some movie/series that are relevant to the conversation... 19 out of 20 I can't find it, results are irrelevant, and I have to search something like "site:imgur.com <thing>" in google images and select type: animated. If at least this worked half of the time, I may say it is valuable.
tonyjstark 9y ago
I wonder, Giphy is far from technological advanced and can be copied by others easily. I know, you need the user base and so on but still, why should it be worth so much money? But it is not like you have a very personal engagement on the website and are unable to switch like you are on facebook when all your friends are there. Giphy is for me a bit like a URL-shortener service, if something better pops up, a lot of people will switch.

by ishi 9y ago

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.
DiThi 9y ago
Since it's integrated in Telegram as "@gif", I tried to use it many times to search for famous gifs or famous clips of some movie/series that are relevant to the conversation... 19 out of 20 I can't find it, results are irrelevant, and I have to search something like "site:imgur.com <thing>" in google images and select type: animated. If at least this worked half of the time, I may say it is valuable.

tonyjstark 9y ago

I wonder, Giphy is far from technological advanced and can be copied by others easily. I know, you need the user base and so on but still, why should it be worth so much money? But it is not like you have a very personal engagement on the website and are unable to switch like you are on facebook when all your friends are there. Giphy is for me a bit like a URL-shortener service, if something better pops up, a lot of people will switch.