{"id":3935,"date":"2017-03-07T17:45:32","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T17:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/giphy-quietly-acquired-imoji-to-build-out-its-emoji-and-sticker-business.html"},"modified":"2017-03-07T17:45:32","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T17:45:32","slug":"giphy-quietly-acquired-imoji-to-build-out-its-emoji-and-sticker-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/giphy-quietly-acquired-imoji-to-build-out-its-emoji-and-sticker-business.html","title":{"rendered":"Giphy quietly acquired imoji to build out its emoji and sticker business"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

Last week, GIF-finding platform Giphy<\/a>\u00a0revealed a new line of business<\/a> offering artist-created stickers in Apple\u2019s iMessage app. But what it didn\u2019t announce was that\u00a0it also made an acquisition to bolster this\u00a0new sticker strategy. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Giphy quietly acquired imoji<\/a>, a startup that had developed\u00a0a popular platform for creators\u00a0to build and distribute custom-made stickers and emoji to the messaging masses.<\/p>\n

Terms of the deal, which completed\u00a0at the end of last year, were not disclosed. The acquisition includes all of imoji\u2019s technology, including its platform for creators, as well as the whole team, which appears to include\u00a0eight people<\/a>, although some of them may not be full time. The founders of San Francisco-based imoji \u2014\u00a0Jason Stein<\/a>, <\/span>Daniel Brusilovsky<\/a>, <\/span>Nima Khoshini<\/a>, <\/span>Kirk Lacob<\/a>, <\/span>Thomas Smith<\/a>, <\/span>Ben Draa<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 include several ex-Apple engineers, as well as\u00a0three people who also hold positions at the Golden State Warriors, the local pro basketball team.<\/p>\n

We were originally tipped off to a possible\u00a0acquisition\u00a0by a reader who noticed that imoji\u2019s apps (one for iMessage stickers, and one for stickers for other text messages) suddenly started to note that\u00a0Giphy Inc was the owner of the app. Then, after we reached out to both companies to ask about them, the apps suddenly disappeared. You can see the cached versions of them here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now we understand that both apps will be making their way back to the App Store soon, along with the rest of the imoji business. Giphy plans to keep imoji\u2019s standalone services \u2014\u00a0all services for artists, API partners, and general\u00a0users \u2014 continuing as normal\u00a0while also integrating some of the tech\u00a0into its\u00a0bigger platform for new services\u2026 and to fill out their collective vision of the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cGIPHY and imoji, GIFs and stickers, it\u2019s all working towards the same goal; making our conversations more rich, more expressive, through easy to use and incredibly fun animation,\u201d said Stein, COO, in an email sent to us confirming some of the details of the deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuilding imoji has been an amazing journey; we\u2019re proud to have developed a product that was used by so many people every day,\u201d added\u00a0Khoshini, imoji\u2019s CTO. \u201cBy partnering with GIPHY, we\u2019re able to continue this journey and bring joy to more people across the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Giphy, originally incubated at Betaworks, has been a breakout hit in the consumer startup world, tapping into the craze for GIFs in social media, where they are used with reckless abandon by many a Slacker, Tweeter, Redditor and others who love to insert short moving pictures instead of words to present\u00a0their two cents to the world.<\/p>\n

To date, Giphy has raised $151 million and is now valued at $600 million<\/a> \u2014 a valuation that it perhaps now needs to fill out with more business growth, hence the sticker launch and the acquisition of Imoji to expand that platform.<\/p>\n

By comparison, imoji is small but mighty. The company \u2014 borne out of the trend of messaging apps opening up themselves as platforms to third party content \u2014 had raised only around $2 million, according to CrunchBase. But the money came from a pretty interesting group of investors. They included Joe Lacob, father of co-founder Kirk, partner at Kleiner Perkins, and majority owner of the Warriors; and Chi-Hua Chien and Erik J. Kim of Goodwater Capital. Chien previously was also at KPCB, and Kim was at Maverick Capital.<\/p>\n

And it had been growing on both sides of its marketplace \u2014 with creators and with sticker users. As of September 2016,\u00a0imoji had over\u00a080 developer partners and\u00a0a reach of 15 million active users each month, with \u201cbillions\u201d of stickers sent per month and close to\u00a0two billion content impressions over\u00a0200 million search requests per month (this is in reference to the results you get back when you search\u00a0for a particular image).<\/p>\n

As of September last year, it\u00a0started\u00a0to gear up for making money: imoji\u2019s basic service is free to use, but last year the company said it was preparing to open its creators\u2019 platform to paying brands.<\/p>\n

This is a potentially lucrative area. Line, the most popular messaging app in Korea and Asia, grossed\u00a0$280 million from selling stickers in 2015<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Twitter is also charging brands to offer promoted stickers<\/a>\u00a0to users, a business that Snap\u2019s\u00a0Snapchat<\/a>\u00a0has also tapped.<\/p>\n

Giphy, it seems, had already been considering how it would move deeper into the area of stickers. \u201cThe Artist Sticker Apps came out of conversations the Giphy\u00a0Arts team has been having with creators around ways we can help them get their work to the masses and get paid while doing it,\u201d said\u00a0David Rosenberg, director of business development at Giphy, told us.<\/p>\n

And this, essentially, is why Giphy chose to acquire imoji: it gives the bigger company an instant platform to build out this business, an existing customer base to get it started, and another revenue-generating vehicle in the form of stickers-as-commercials,\u00a0by way of paying brands.<\/p>\n

The move also points to some consolidation in the world of creative social media tools. Things like stickers and GIFs are features by their very definition, dependent on having platforms happy to host them. But those who are building businesses around them are clearly trying to carve out a place for themselves as platforms in their own right.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was quickly clear to us that imoji shares\u00a0many of the same philosophies and values as Giphy, as well as similarities in the ways it manifested; we both work with content partners, nurture a community of artists, power visual communication for many platforms through our APIs, and constantly push the technology behind it all,\u201d said David Rosenberg, Giphy\u2019s business development director. \u201cAs we explored ways to work together, we began exploring what a deeper relationship might look like and, as of late last year, made it official! 2017 will be a great year for GIPHY and\u00a0we\u2019re incredibly excited to have\u00a0the imoji team come on board.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is Giphy\u2019s third acquisition, after buying GIF messaging app Nutmeg<\/a>\u00a0and GifGrabber<\/a>, a tool for making GIFs on your Mac, which is now known as\u00a0Giphy Capture. This doesn\u2019t seem to be the end of Giphy\u2019s MA story: Rosenberg hints that there have been some other acquisitions at Giphy that we haven\u2019t\u00a0about, or that Giphy may be planning to make soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fun to work with like-minded people in the space; that\u2019s why we always want to do it. We collaborate, we compliment and sometimes we form a deeper partnership,\u201d he said. \u201cOur goal is to make sure everybody benefits. As it happens we\u2019ve been fortunate to form deeper relationships with Nutmeg, GIF Grabber, and now imoji\u2026just to name a few.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/MZfEPvGbd8w\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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