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Giphy is a trojan horse into most sms and messaging apps. The gif aspect of it is pointless from FB's perspective. It's all about knowing who you're talking to,

Giphy is a trojan horse into most sms and messaging apps. The gif aspect of it is pointless from FB's perspective. It's all about knowing who you're talking to, when and how often. I totally stopped using Giphy after this acquisition. It isn't as bad as outright buying messaging platforms or social networks, but it let FB reach into areas they otherwise would never have visibility such as android keyboards and slack channels.

mrkramer 5y ago
I know Zuck is greedy but I can't believe he is so greedy that he wants even usage data from GIFs. Facebook has thousands data points and signals from Facebook app, Instagram app, Messenger app and WhatsApp. If he wants even more data points from GIFs then I suppose it needs to get blocked. But looking from market competition perspective Giphy is irrelevant; it does not compete with Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok. I mean you can say it competes for attention but that's it. GIFs are not that relevant as photos or videos are.
- somehnacct3757 5y ago
  FB's friend graph is their main product. Everything else exists to enrich the friend graph. With Giphy, you embed a gif from your Android keyboard and FB recieves your IP and puts a uid on the gif. Just like a tracking pixel, when your recipient views the image FB now has their IP and knows you both communicate. Using the IPs as lookups they can now make a friend suggestion in FB without any activity having taken place in that product. In reality the fingerprinting is more sophisticated than IP but the idea is the same. This is not beneath FB, it is the lifeblood of their business. Number of friends is a key metric. They know if they can ratchet that number up then you will use the platform more. Which is why they paid so much for Giphy which otherwise has no business model or path to profitability.

mrkramer 5y ago

I know Zuck is greedy but I can't believe he is so greedy that he wants even usage data from GIFs. Facebook has thousands data points and signals from Facebook app, Instagram app, Messenger app and WhatsApp. If he wants even more data points from GIFs then I suppose it needs to get blocked. But looking from market competition perspective Giphy is irrelevant; it does not compete with Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok. I mean you can say it competes for attention but that's it. GIFs are not that relevant as photos or videos are.

somehnacct3757 5y ago
FB's friend graph is their main product. Everything else exists to enrich the friend graph. With Giphy, you embed a gif from your Android keyboard and FB recieves your IP and puts a uid on the gif. Just like a tracking pixel, when your recipient views the image FB now has their IP and knows you both communicate. Using the IPs as lookups they can now make a friend suggestion in FB without any activity having taken place in that product. In reality the fingerprinting is more sophisticated than IP but the idea is the same. This is not beneath FB, it is the lifeblood of their business. Number of friends is a key metric. They know if they can ratchet that number up then you will use the platform more. Which is why they paid so much for Giphy which otherwise has no business model or path to profitability.