Facebook already holds the title of the largest social networking site in the world. It owns Instagram, Workplace from Facebook, WhatsApp, and now, it’s the proud owner of GIPHY, a site that lets users make and share GIFs via direct API integration into platforms like Twitter, WhatsApp, Slack, and Microsoft Teams. GIPHY has over 300 million active users per day by those hoping to lighten the mood at work, school, and during casual communications via the internet, making it widely-popular.
Now Facebook’s bought the company, in a deal reportedly worth $400 million, GIPHY is today a part of Facebook’s Instagram business unit. In a recent blog post, VP of Products, Instagram, Vishal Shah, wrote, third-parties can still access the API. Yet and still, should this worry Microsoft Teams users? Will Facebook use GIPHY to track Microsoft Teams users or even competitors? Facebook notoriously collects loads of user data for advertisement purposes, and the company’s somewhat owned up to this in the past. The latest acquisition, however, is said to not be for tracking users, according to Instagram, Facebook’s parent company.
“There are no tracking pixels, cookies, or any other embedded user tracking mechanisms in GIPHY’s GIFs or stickers”
This doesn’t mean the social media giant will not be able to collect internet usage data. Tom Arbuthnot, Principal Solutions Architect, Modality Systems, and Microsoft Certified Master/MVP, said Teams users have no reason to disable GIPHY in Microsoft Teams, though.
The way he sees things, employees using Facebook are already tracked by Facebook, adding: “Even if GIPHY’s used to track users, which is doesn’t seem to be, it wouldn’t make much difference. Do you block employees from using every other messaging tool that uses GIPHY too?” Facebook’s suite of apps already makes up roughly 50 percent of GIPHY usage, according to the social media company.
Arbuthnot said, if you do want to disable GIPHY, the process is shortlived. You can access it under ‘Messaging Policies’ from the Microsoft Teams Admin Center. “Microsoft could offer ‘Tenor’ as an alternative.” He did caution, it’s owned by Google though, and that GIPHY is by far the more popular service. ‘Tenor’ is already integrated with Microsoft Yammer.
Tom Arbuthnot
GIPHY’s been around since 2013 and made its debut as a basic search engine for gifs. Shortly after its launch, the GIF sharing site integrated with Facebook, making its way to integration with several other social media platforms like Twitter, which was the website’s second integration partner. According to Crunchbase, GIPHY’s done a lot of fundraising and raised a total of $150.9 million during five successful funding rounds. The question that remains on my mind is what are Facebook’s business interests following its latest acquisition?
If you ask me, eventually, GIPHY could become a money-maker for Facebook, in the form of advertisement. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, never makes a move without considering the long-term benefits of the investment. In this sense, to him, everything is carefully calculated. It should, therefore, be interesting to watch the transformation of GIPHY unfold before our eyes, especially because it is in the hands of one of the most aggressive data collectors on the planet.
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