It got very expensive for us to run, and we very nearly sold the app early on, but decided to keep hold of it and just add some little premium features to keep it afloat. Since then it's been running pretty close to break even. We kept it because we always had the intention of one day picking it up and getting serious about it.
Now that both Tenor (GIF Keyboard) and Giphy have sold to Google and Facebook respectively, we feel like it might be time to get serious.
What I'd love to know from the HN community is: a) do you have privacy concerns about Giphy/Facebook tracking? b) what platforms would we need to support to get you onboard with RightGIF c) are there app developers out there that would make use of our API if we made it public?
Thanks heaps!
Our app uses the Giphy API. Not having animated GIFs meant a few of our users would eventually leave or move to platforms that do have them.
After about a year of usage, we've been relatively happy with it. Our app is PG so we need to make sure all the GIFs sent are completely PG (otherwise users blame us rather than Giphy). Not sure if your API already has the tech to do this. Giphy was pretty good at it, and we only once got a report of a porn-like GIF.
That said:
a. Yes. FB SDK was already relatively sneakier than we had expected and we would have done away with it a while ago if we didn't have so many users "signed in with facebook"
b. I assume it's just a regular HTTP request but you probably want to have Kotlin/Swift/etc
c. We might move to it IF it turned out that the privacy issue was actually real and not just our own assumption.
Also, if you release the API, I'd say making it a drop-in replacement for Giphy would increase the adoption. S3-compatible storage options, or Fixer-compatible APIs, etc are examples and they can help reduce the friction.
Even now I find some of the labelling of Tenor (GIF Keyboard) and Giphy to be lacking. Which makes it hard to find an appropriate reaction GIF.
Better search, categories and recommendations would probably be a good addition.
Maybe a merge tool too, to combine too gifs for the perfect reaction GIF....
Hope you will expand beyond Slack. We use RocketChat. But I assume the other platforms will be a priority first for you.
Good luck growing the company by the way and offering a non-FAANG alternative.
I bought a really simple (or possibly stupid?) domain that takes advantage of a particular TLD to make a common reactionary phrase, and it returns gifs that match that phrase.
I’d used the Giphy and Tenor APIs and I’d be interested in yours, but without Multiple results it’d defeat the purpose. Also I kind of assume your web site demo is limited to “safe” results, would you make “unsafe” results available via api?
Even if you don't want to ultimately sell, you should try to get Microsoft to use your service.
Also: I'm not a frequent user of GIF apps/keyboards, because gifs load for so long. Did you think about it to preview only every X frame of the GIF (even like 3 frames per gif) cause people usually know what gifs they are looking for (don't have to explore the dataset to look for "the one that seems right"). Maybe it will load them quickly. And if a user does not choose a gif for X sec, it loads all of the frames or next gifs?