Meta says it will sell Giphy to comply with UK breakup order — the company wants to merge the video sharing service with Google and Twitter, it was revealed at the end of the week.
Giphy was founded in 2005 as a platform for sharing short videos made with amateur film crews.
The company has also collaborated with the United Nations International Youth Foundation to release a video depicting the horrors of the war in Syria.
The company has raised $32 million and has 500 employees worldwide, according to TechCrunch.
“We had this dream to create a simple way to share short videos,” Giphy founder and CEO Ryan Tate told Business Insider Friday.
“I’m a huge fan of Instagram and I didn’t want to just create an app for it, I wanted to build out something that made an impact on people’s lives, and I felt it would be more impactful to tell a story with stories than to just have someone on Instagram.”
Giphy has faced competition from platforms like Vimeo and Vine.
The company received a warning from the UK government over an app for children to get drunk in the video sharing app Vine.
“We’ll be following the law here in the UK when it comes to the law around the app and services we use like Vine,” said Tate in an email to Business Insider.
“One thing I can promise is to not go down the path of some of the other companies that have gone down there. The UK is a great place and I’m proud to live in it but I don’t want to damage the things I love.”
The app that Giphy had used had to pay the UK tax authorities. In the wake of that incident, the company changed its terms and conditions and removed the app from the app store.
The company is considering ways to comply with the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) ruling to break up the social media companies.
“In the end, the only thing that can make the GIPHY Network stronger is stronger business,” said Tate. “We’ve got a billion users who are going to be looking for an alternative. Our priority is to make sure the service is as good as possible.”
Giphy was founded in 2005 as