Following the announcement that Vine would shutter in coming months, GIF search engine and platform Giphy is seeking to help users preserve and share their six-second videos. In a Medium post, Giphy announced a tool that will enable users to convert Vines into GIFs. (Vine also previously said it will let users download their existing libraries while also preserving all Vines on vine.co).
“For now, [converted Vines will] be shareable on Giphy as GIFs,” the company explained, “but we’ve got the videos for you, too (sound and all), in the source data we keep for each and every Vine-to-GIF.” The tool, titled Giphy Loves Vine, is now live. Users must simply create a Giphy account and copy and paste their profile URLs into the tool to convert all of their looping videos in one fell swoop.
In addition to filling some timely white space, Giphy also cinched today a $72 million funding round from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Institutional Venture Partners, and China Media Capital, valuing the company at around $600 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. In total, Giphy has raised about $150 million in venture funding. Giphy says it reaches 100 million users and serves 1 billion GIFs every day.
Subscribe to get the latest creator news
However, the Journal notes that the New York-based company — which counts 75 employees — still doesn’t currently have a revenue model in place. Giphy will use new funds to build its editorial staff and technical infrastructure, according to the Journal, in order to increase its GIF library in categories like sports, new, movies, and music. “We want to be the YouTube of GIFs, where you’d come to create them, see them, share them,” the company’s COO, Adam Leibsohn, told the Journal.
