By Elizabeth Culliford
(Reuters) – Facebook Inc is acquiring Giphy, a popular website for making and sharing animated images, or GIFs, Facebook said in a blog post on Friday.
The cost, which was not disclosed, was placed at around $400 million by news website Axios. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The announcement comes at a time when the largest social media network is under scrutiny from regulators over antitrust concerns.
Giphy will become part of Instagram, the photo-sharing site owned by Facebook. Its GIF library, which can integrate with other apps, will be further integrated into Instagram and other Facebook-owned apps.
“People will still be able to upload GIFs; developers and API partners will continue to have the same access to GIPHY’s APIs; and GIPHY’s creative community will still be able to create great content,” said Vishal Shah, Instagram’s vice president of product, in the blog post.
“We will continue to make GIPHY openly available to the wider ecosystem,” Giphy said in a post on blogging website Medium.
Facebook’s blog post said 50% of Giphy’s traffic comes from Facebook’s apps, with half of that coming from Instagram.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford; Editing by Richard Chang)
