Another iteration of the endless cycle of image hosting sites?<p>The cycle goes like this:<p>- people want a bullshit-free service to upload images to, so that they can link to them, and there's no option available<p>- somebody starts such a simple, bullshit-free service<p>- as time goes by, the service realizes hosting costs money and they can't operate on a loss forever<p>- they start adding bullshit to try and bring in some revenue<p>- site turns into the same bloated crap it replaced<p>- somebody starts a new bullshit-free site, and users migrate<p>For instance, imgur is at the last stage of this cycle now. If giphy is taking serious investor money, it spells an accelerated period of crappifying the service - investors need to get their return somehow.
<p><pre><code> But Giphy faces challenges in building a business.
It hasn’t figured out a way to bring in revenue, and it
doesn’t own many of the GIFs or have exclusive distribution
partnerships.
</code></pre>
They have raised $150 million for a GIF search engine.
Related: The Fuzzy, Insane Math That's Creating So Many Billion-Dollar Tech Companies<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/the-fuzzy-insane-math-that-s-creating-so-many-billion-dollar-tech-companies" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/the-fuzzy...</a>
Probably I would look like a noob in the context of SV startup world, but can someone tell me how these insane evaluations are calculated?<p>Or there is a deal on the way with google/facebook/whatever for their user/gif database and/or search engine? Maybe they have some insane R&D going on that I am not aware of?<p>When I see startups without any proper business model on how to make money evaluated for insane prices ..ahem twtr ahem.. and burning mountain loads of money - it makes my blood boil.
I wanted to see how hard it would be to build a gif search engine, I made <a href="https://gifffy.com" rel="nofollow">https://gifffy.com</a> in a month. My buddies and I used it for our personal slack instead of giphy. It is nice to be able to adjust the search results ourselves.<p>I am pessimistic on gif search as a business. I am one (not super) talented developer and I made a replacement in a month.
From the article:
“We believe GIFs are emerging as a format that consumers love and will be really important to advertisers as well,” said Barry Schuler, a partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson.<p>OK, for me GIFs are from a bygone era of the web, for example:
<a href="http://www.11points.com/Web-Tech/11_Best_Old_School_Animated_GIFs" rel="nofollow">http://www.11points.com/Web-Tech/11_Best_Old_School_Animated...</a><p>This is similar to bell bottom jeans coming into fashion again, and then having a retail store advertise them as an 'Emerging fashion trend' (more like recycling fashion trend)
I wonder if I am once again too negative. But what the hell?<p>Valuation doesn't mean anything I know. But how can they raise so much money on a product like this? What's the monetization available behind this apart from selling user data.
I think what makes Giphy so popular is its integrations with Slack and Facebook. However, the Giphy Slack integration is really awful. Should be renamed to gif roulette or something. RightGIF Slack integration is a <i>lot</i> more accurate. I'm not sure what they are doing differently but the $600MM valuation for a below average search engine is understandably off-putting..
That's insane. Gfycat [1] is based in my hometown (Edmonton, Alberta), and I always thought it was a dumb idea with no potential for monetization. Looks like I'm wrong.<p>[1]: <a href="https://gfycat.com/" rel="nofollow">https://gfycat.com/</a>
> raised a fresh $72 million round of equity funding from lead investor Draper Fisher Jurvetson, as well as Institutional Venture Partners and China Media Capital<p>These people all need to have their heads examined.
Would just like to point out that the article takes a hard stance on one of the most hotly debated internet topics out there:<p><i>Giphy, which is pronounced with a hard “g”...</i>
I realize valuation numbers like this make headlines and are a quick way to proxy success (or lack of) for a startup.<p>But private market startup valuations are about as useful as public market stock prices, i.e. not useful without more context and information.<p>Even if numbers are technically accurate no journalist would ever write 'Apple's stock price 3 years ago was around $700 vs closer to $100 today...so the company must be hurting.'<p>I'm surprised startup valuations reporting has continued for so long without more disclaimers or information in the articles about what a number really means.<p>(side note: I'm also surprised movie weekend box office earnings are as big an interest as they seem, so what the heck do I know).<p>If people are going to leak valuation numbers, is it right to publish this # without knowing or asking a bit more what term sheets look like?<p>For those who might know, how hard would it be to get more accurate info tracking the common equity value for startups?
$600M isn't a crazy price tag for a media property that wanted all the content and the brand. Plus, giphy has built some pretty deep integrations, I don't expect apple or slack etc will all of a sudden start a giphy competitor. If companies like Snapchat who already use sponsored content from brands are told by those brands to pull that content from the giphy api because they are using the base content on other platforms for the same campaign, seems like it could become a viable business <i></i>(I retract "become a viable business" and replace it with "have an outcome")
What? Why?! I only ever see the giphy URL I didn't even realize there was a website to it I just thought it was a host like aws or something. Who are the idiots who do these valuations?
GIF site Giphy has, along with numerous other of its kin, found its way to my firewall's /etc/hosts blocklist on account of the overuse and abuse of autoplay images on far too many websites.<p>Until such time as browsers and animation-hosting sites refrain from autoplay defaults, and worse: failure to provide any mechanism for overriding this at the device, user, or application level, that shall be my SOP.
> “We believe GIFs are emerging as a format that consumers love and will be really important to advertisers as well,” said Barry Schuler, a partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson.<p>Do these clowns really believe the shit that comes out of their mouths? Giphy will never make anyone a dime; gotta wonder how they duped people into another seed round.
I LOVE Giphy! It's the only reaction/gif site that made me think, "They should <i>really</i> have their own chat app". I would download that app in an instant.