How I created the first GIF search engine in the world. Giphy was never first.
Many followers will think that the title sounds provocative, since few people know that the first search engine and the largest database for GIFs was the company — Slinky. I understand perfectly well that more than ten years have passed since I founded (in 2009) that company and subsequently sold it (Sohu Inc. acquired Slinky in 2013 for $2.2M).
TBH, I was pleasantly surprised that my work is still alive, some of the many millions remember what we did and some even use my company’s products to this day. In a way, I’m amazed by this fact due to the understanding of the new generation’s clip thinking and the fact that most people do not remember what they ate a day ago.
Hello World
First, I’ll introduce myself.
Vic is here 👋 I am the founder of several companies (Stickeroid, Teleport), Ex-Googler, + the creator of the first search engine for GIFs and investor in many well-known companies.
This article is based on my life experience and does not intend to duplicate content that was written earlier, so this story is about something completely different, about the main aspects and reasons why I created Slinky. If you haven’t read that post, I recommend it.
2010–2011
As many have already noticed from previous mentions, I worked as a software engineer at Google.
There is no need to fantasize on that, it was an ordinary job, but in the right department at that time (Chrome Department). At that time, the company was not so influential, successful, and in some sense no one could even imagine that in the future Google would become a trillion-dollar business. The browser technologies and solutions division was created in 2008 and required a rethinking of competition with the main competitor from Microsoft.
From intern status to remote/full-time developer, this cycle took about a year. Despite already having impressive experience in developing web applications and basic technologies, it was not so easy for me to get that offer. Started programming when I was 7 years old, it was a long journey of learning technology stacks from Delphi, Ruby, C++ to Java.
While working on Google products, my focus was within several technology stacks, extensions and cloud solutions with browser queries. The most popular example is a framework that allowed the creation of extensions in the browser ecosystem. During that period, I worked on more than a dozen different extensions and created several of my own.
Slinky <from scratch to something> 2009
I don’t remember which day, but I remember what became the beginning for creating a new startup. I collected data that could be used to understand the audience (don’t worry, this is open data, we didn’t collect user data). Among several million requests, my curiosity was drawn to all requests with an additional searchkey +GIFS. To be clear, this entire process took place before I started working at G. All this data was collected carefully, where I applied some of the skills of sorting, mathematical algorithms and other processes.
It looked like this
Britney Spears GIF, Michael Jacksoon moonwalk GIF, Timberlake smile GIF, LOL GIF, Thank you GIF and etc.
Users were looking for animated files in order to use them and share them with friends or attach them to forums/boards.
So I wrote the code for the world’s first GIF search engine in 4 months in 2009 and released it in 2010. I called Slinky (Summary + Link + Ypsilon).
As you already understood, Giphy was simply inspired by our work and copied/cloned our idea.
99% of people can probably assume that this is unfair and ask why didn’t I sue them?
1 — Initially, we thought that Giphy would not be able to turn into a serious company, so we did not pay attention to them
2 — Our main popularity was outside the US, we grew using our own funds and those that we could raise in Europe. Giphy received a lot of $$$$/support from many venture capital funds, who believed that they were innovators and first in the world
3 — As many already know, in 2013 our company was caught in a series of scandals. Including against the backdrop of attacks by hackers from China. This reduced the valuation several times. Then Slinky was acquired by Sohu in 2013 for $2.2M [Then part of Sogou Search]
4 — After many years, I’m 100% sure that the worst thing that can be is a regret that our company missed a great chance to make history on the Internet, as well as leave a more serious imprint behind itself. I am grateful to fate that all these things became part of my past and present.
5 — The experience of that time helped me create new projects that were able to implement many ideas that could not be implemented @ Slinky
What happened to Giphy?
In addition to the world’s first GIF search engine, we subsequently created the most popular browser themes for Google Chrome. More than 250 million people have used Slinky Themes since release (2011). They are currently installed on over 950,000 browsers since the last update was in 2015
We created the world’s first themes that changed the way a browser should look.
