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I think a lot of people here are pessimistic about Giphy just because they took on huge VC funding, but if Giphy can maintain and grow its user base and be able

I think a lot of people here are pessimistic about Giphy just because they took on huge VC funding, but if Giphy can maintain and grow its user base and be able to monetize and earn a profit of .5 dollars per user per yr, then it would have earned 100M in profit. I know it will be hard but thats entrepreneurship, its never easy

iamdave 9y ago
This is a mere personal anecdote so it doesn't mean much at large, but I'm pessimistic about the advent of sponsored {thing} not necessarily with Giphy. To me this is just another %thing% that advertisers have leached a tentacle into for the sake of getting me to buy something. I get it, it's the game we play now with content that is ostensibly or otherwise "free", pandora's box is open but the internet has become such a frustrating place for me personally every time I see "Sponsored tweet" or "sponsored post" or "sponsored ________" that tries to blend itself into the rank and file of non-sponsored content I would otherwise enjoy.
- twblalock 9y ago
  The question is, how can the non-sponsored content you enjoy continue to exist if the company that hosts it doesn't make money? After the VC money runs out, content hosting service need to pay the bills somehow. I can only think of a few ways this can work: you pay for the content you like via a subscription or per unit of content, you look at ads, or you look at sponsored tweets/gifs/whatever. I suspect that most people would be unwilling to pay subscription fees, so ads and/or sponsored content are probably the way to go for most companies.
  - iamdave 9y ago
    Agreed and well met. At least for me, if the content generated is truly engaging and substantive enough, I gladly would pay a subscription fee. This may not work arguably for a gif site, but your point is well taken-because it's completely true and we see it daily. I suppose to unpack my position a bit better than I have so far, if the sponsored content is truly relevant and engaging, I'd have far less things to complain about on this topic. As it is, the majority of "sponsored content" I've seen hasn't really amounted to much that seems to fit within the ecosystem it exists in; it oft seems out of place and irrelevant. But again, your point is well taken and I'm sure smarter people than I will continue working on this question and find ways to continue delivering content freeloaders like me love to consume :P
cwkoss 9y ago
Giphy is such a useless product, I have trouble imagining them being able to monetize for more that 0.10/user/year. Not only is it a timewaster application (why would a business pay for employees to use it), but it also does a poor job of search - its main selling point. Baffling that anyone believes it's worth $600M.
- boyce 9y ago
  Do you think the search problems are the barrier to their monetisation because surely that's a problem money can easily fix
  - cwkoss 9y ago
    I think they could only solve their search problem by hiring an army of minimum wage gif classifiers to curate the attachment tags and labels to each gif. That would make their search usable, but still not sure what the market for gifs is. I don't see any good way to compel their end users to pay for the service, and ads will fundamentally degrade the utility of the service even further. They've essentially built a poorly-functioning toy and are getting investors as if they are a B2B SaaS service. What is their value-add? Is there any economic utility in being able to quickly find a gif?
    - sbarre 9y ago
      > Is there any economic utility in being able to quickly find a gif? Giphy gets used all the time in my company's Slack channels.. It's a morale thing I think (at least a bit).. People enjoy putting a bit of fun into the work chat, in a way that's acceptable (in our office culture - don't want to speak for everyone) and low-effort.. If Giphy was suddenly 5-10$/month (like RightGif is for example), I think my company would gladly pay that to continue to let our employees use it during their work conversations.
      - cwkoss 9y ago
        Fair enough. In my company's experience giphy only attaches a relevant gif around 25% of the time, the rest of the time the gif is an odd non-sequitur. Relevant and amusing gifs are probably closer to 5-10%. We used it a bunch when we first moved to slack, but now we probably use it less than once per day across the whole team. We'd turn it off without hesitation if we had to pay for it.
noxToken 9y ago
I'm hoping it will bring better search functionality, but the search will probably still suck plus ad gifs pasted throughout. Their search functionality has autocomplete as if it might know what you're looking for. The results are typically mediocre though. So here's hoping that they use the ad money wisely to improve the search algo.

iamdave 9y ago

This is a mere personal anecdote so it doesn't mean much at large, but I'm pessimistic about the advent of sponsored {thing} not necessarily with Giphy. To me this is just another %thing% that advertisers have leached a tentacle into for the sake of getting me to buy something. I get it, it's the game we play now with content that is ostensibly or otherwise "free", pandora's box is open but the internet has become such a frustrating place for me personally every time I see "Sponsored tweet" or "sponsored post" or "sponsored ________" that tries to blend itself into the rank and file of non-sponsored content I would otherwise enjoy.

twblalock 9y ago
The question is, how can the non-sponsored content you enjoy continue to exist if the company that hosts it doesn't make money? After the VC money runs out, content hosting service need to pay the bills somehow. I can only think of a few ways this can work: you pay for the content you like via a subscription or per unit of content, you look at ads, or you look at sponsored tweets/gifs/whatever. I suspect that most people would be unwilling to pay subscription fees, so ads and/or sponsored content are probably the way to go for most companies.
- iamdave 9y ago
  Agreed and well met. At least for me, if the content generated is truly engaging and substantive enough, I gladly would pay a subscription fee. This may not work arguably for a gif site, but your point is well taken-because it's completely true and we see it daily. I suppose to unpack my position a bit better than I have so far, if the sponsored content is truly relevant and engaging, I'd have far less things to complain about on this topic. As it is, the majority of "sponsored content" I've seen hasn't really amounted to much that seems to fit within the ecosystem it exists in; it oft seems out of place and irrelevant. But again, your point is well taken and I'm sure smarter people than I will continue working on this question and find ways to continue delivering content freeloaders like me love to consume :P

cwkoss 9y ago

Giphy is such a useless product, I have trouble imagining them being able to monetize for more that 0.10/user/year. Not only is it a timewaster application (why would a business pay for employees to use it), but it also does a poor job of search - its main selling point. Baffling that anyone believes it's worth $600M.

boyce 9y ago
Do you think the search problems are the barrier to their monetisation because surely that's a problem money can easily fix
- cwkoss 9y ago
  I think they could only solve their search problem by hiring an army of minimum wage gif classifiers to curate the attachment tags and labels to each gif. That would make their search usable, but still not sure what the market for gifs is. I don't see any good way to compel their end users to pay for the service, and ads will fundamentally degrade the utility of the service even further. They've essentially built a poorly-functioning toy and are getting investors as if they are a B2B SaaS service. What is their value-add? Is there any economic utility in being able to quickly find a gif?
  - sbarre 9y ago
    > Is there any economic utility in being able to quickly find a gif? Giphy gets used all the time in my company's Slack channels.. It's a morale thing I think (at least a bit).. People enjoy putting a bit of fun into the work chat, in a way that's acceptable (in our office culture - don't want to speak for everyone) and low-effort.. If Giphy was suddenly 5-10$/month (like RightGif is for example), I think my company would gladly pay that to continue to let our employees use it during their work conversations.
    - cwkoss 9y ago
      Fair enough. In my company's experience giphy only attaches a relevant gif around 25% of the time, the rest of the time the gif is an odd non-sequitur. Relevant and amusing gifs are probably closer to 5-10%. We used it a bunch when we first moved to slack, but now we probably use it less than once per day across the whole team. We'd turn it off without hesitation if we had to pay for it.

noxToken 9y ago

I'm hoping it will bring better search functionality, but the search will probably still suck plus ad gifs pasted throughout. Their search functionality has autocomplete as if it might know what you're looking for. The results are typically mediocre though. So here's hoping that they use the ad money wisely to improve the search algo.