Facebook Buys GIPHY and Introduces Avatars
What do these new changes mean for users, partners, and competitors?
Update #1: Facebook Introduces Avatars
On May 13, 2020, Facebook released Avatars, described as digital personas that allow users to engage in a more personal and dynamic way. Fidji Simo, the lead on the Facebook Avatar project states:
Avatars enable you to share a range of emotions and expressions via a digital persona that’s uniquely representative of you… we’re excited to bring this new form of self-expression to more people around the world.
The new experience allows users to create a customized cartoonish version of themselves attached to comments, stories, and instant messages. Avatars permit users to convey a wide range of emotions — excitement, joy, anger, and much more. The customizable outfits, hairstyles, expressions, and complexions enable users the opportunity to further express themselves. The feature brings a refreshing experience to the platform.
Many describe Avatars as Facebook’s version of Bitmoji. Currently integrated with competitors including Snapchat and Apple iMessage, Bitmoji allows users to create their own personal emoji. Facebook most likely saw great success with Bitmoji and wanted to mirror it — so they developed Avatars. It is not the first time Facebook copied a competitor. After all, Snapchat first to debuted Stories, and now it’s one of the most marketed and utilized features on Instagram and Facebook.
Update #2: Facebook Buys Giphy
On May 15, 2020, Facebook agreed to purchase Giphy for 400 million dollars. A popular platform for shareable images, users all around the world utilize Giphy to send animated short looping content to friends, family, and even co-workers. Axios reports that talks of the acquisition started well before the Coronavius pandemic. Giphy will retain its’ current branding with goals to integrate with Instagram (owned by Facebook).
Many describe this acquisition as a mutually beneficial partnership — Giphy will benefit from the billions of Facebook and Instagram users while Facebook will benefit from Giphy’s highly popular library of curated content. TechCrunch reports that 50% of traffic Giphy receives already come from Facebook’s family of applications.
The team at Facebook and Instagram released a statement claiming that Giphy will continue to operate its library and maintain API connections with various platforms including Slack, Twitter, and Reddit. With the acquisition, all of the data Giphy owns now belongs to Facebook.
What are the implications of the new features?
Avatars
For businesses and organizations, it may make sense to create one or multiple Avatars that reflect the characteristics of their brand or target audience. Marketers can utilize Avatars for branding purposes, similar to how a logo functions. Avatars can help generate awareness, increase brand recall, or build deeper connections with their customers.
Giphy
By purchasing Giphy, Facebook grew its’ GIF library tenfold. Giphy is currently integrated with many popular social media platforms including iMessage, Slack, Twitter, TikTok, and Snapchat. Now that Facebook owns the product, many predict that Facebook may stop or limit capabilities for competitors (even though Facebook claims they won’t). Companies with Giphy partnerships could also decide to disassociate API connections if it is not in their best interest. This could get hairy for Facebook if Giphy starts losing loyal customers as well as important API partners.
Facebook may allow marketers to tap into Giphy’s data and user search history for advertising purposes. This could become a powerful tool for marketers in improving marketing campaigns, as Giphy collects data from users across various online platforms (not just Facebook). As most of Facebook’s revenue comes from advertising, it wouldn’t be a surprise if Facebook starts allowing brands to target Giphy users for their marketing initiatives.
Both
The introduction of Avatars and Giphy creates a heightened experience for Facebook users. It’s interesting that Facebook released two new features during the same week meant to improve user engagement and personalization across its’ family of applications. With the rise of popular video-sharing app, TikTok, many Facebook users say that Facebook is now boring and outdated. These new features can be viewed as Facebook’s way of increasing excitement on its various platforms.
Monitoring user adoption, success, and failures of the two new features will reveal how Facebook users truly feel about the new changes.
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