Gfycat
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Video hosting service |
| Founded | January 1, 2013 in Edmonton, Canada |
| Founder | Richard Rabbat, Dan McEleney, Jeff Harris |
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, California and Edmonton, Alberta , United States and Canada |
| Products | Short video hosting platform, GIF Brewery app, iMessage app, Android app |
| Parent | Snap Inc. (from May 2020) |
Gfycat () was a platform specializing in user-created short video hosting, established by Richard Rabbat, Dan McEleney, and Jeff Harris.
History
Originating in 2013 in Edmonton, Canada, Gfycat was a pioneer in the video encoding of GIF files. The company was formally registered in the United States in 2015 and secured $10 million through a seed funding round in 2016.
The service enabled users to upload and host brief videos and offered applications for iMessage, Android devices, as well as the GIF Brewery app on macOS for creating GIFs and videos. Gfycat integrated seamlessly with various platforms such as Reddit, Tango, Microsoft Outlook, Skype, and WordPress. It earned recognition as a finalist in the "Startup to Watch" category at the 2016 Advertising Age Creativity Awards.
By 2016, Gfycat was ranked among the top 57 websites in the U.S. by traffic volume, boasting over 130 million monthly active users by 2017. Its audience primarily consisted of English speakers, with notable engagement across Europe and Latin America. The platform supported multiple languages including English, French, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Arabic. The predominant user demographic ranged from 18 to 35 years old.
Gfycat maintained operational offices in both Edmonton, Alberta and Palo Alto, California.
In 2018, the company suffered a security breach that impacted roughly 8 million user accounts; subsequently, the compromised data was put up for sale on dark web marketplaces.
December 2019 saw the introduction of redgifs.com by Gfycat as a dedicated site for adult content hosting.
In May 2020, Gfycat was acquired by Snap Inc., the parent organization of Snapchat. Following this acquisition, the platform ceased all adult content hosting.
On May 18, 2023, Gfycat's TLS certificate expired amid persistent issues with uploading content and minimal communication from the company. Although the certificate was renewed on May 22, upload difficulties remained unresolved.
On June 30, 2023, Gfycat declared it would terminate its services effective September 1, 2023. The website was subsequently taken offline on that date.