Meta has sold the animated-gif search engine Giphy to Shutterstock for $53m (£42m), despite
paying $400m for it just three years ago. Last year, the UK's competition
watchdog reissued
an order to Meta to sell Giphy, on competition grounds.
Giphy is the main supplier of animated gifs to
social networks such as Snapchat, TikTok and Twitter. Meta platforms Facebook,
Instagram and WhatsApp will still be able to access Giphy's content, as part of
the deal. Every day, Giphy, the world's largest collection of gifs and
stickers, says, it receives more than 1.3 billion search queries.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)
had originally
ordered the sale in November 2021.
On acquiring Giphy, Meta had said it would be
"openly available" to other social networks.
But the CMA's investigation of the buyout had
found it would harm competition in social media and advertising. It was the
first time the regulator had blocked a deal struck by a big Silicon Valley
company.
Last September, Meta made an appeal to the CMA
to try to prevent the sale.
Gifs "have
fallen out of fashion as a content form, with younger users, in particular, describing gifs as 'for boomers' and 'cringe”, Meta said.
But in October, Meta said it would accept the
CMA's order to sell Giphy, although it was disappointed. Shutterstock said it
was excited to acquire Giphy. Chief executive Paul Hennessy said: "Giphy enables everyday users to
express themselves in memorable ways with gif and sticker content, while also
enabling brands to be a part of these casual conversations."
Giphy's library is fuelled by individual
artists, who contribute original content, and companies such as Disney and
Netflix - ensuring a steady supply of current content that can be inserted into
everyday conversations and shared via social media.