Animated GIF images are those moving pictures we see more than often. From the web to social media networks, they are popular as means of expressing everything from mood to feelings. The microblogging Twitter is one of those places where GIF thrives, and it's making the way of sharing them easier.
The company sees the potential of GIFs by introducing n new feature called GIF Search. Announced on February 17th, 2016, it's meant to make sharing GIFs in Tweets and Direct Messages easier.
With the feature, users when composing a tweet or DM, can search and browse Twitter's GIF library. The button to access the library is located right at the bottom, between the polling and camera roll options. So to express practically anything they want to show, users just need to do a simple search by keyword, or just browse them according to their categories.
To make the feature happens and to populate its lists of GIFs, Twitter makes use of its partners at GIPHY and Riffsy.
"GIPHY delivers real-time GIFs as they happen, helping to power Twitter's live commentary and conversation," said GIPHY's founder and CEO Alex Chung. "GIPHY's users are creating GIFs for news, entertainment, sports, and expression that can enrich Tweets. We’re excited to work with Twitter to make sharing these GIFs even easier."
"So much can be expressed with GIFs, and the key is to find just the right one in the moment that quickly and efficiently expresses your emotions," said Riffsy's co-founder and CEO David McIntosh. "We're excited to explore this partnership with Twitter and watch Twitter users discover and share their favorite GIFs in their daily lives."
The feature starts rolling out on February 17th to the coming weeks to users on Twitter's web interface, Android and iOS.
The GIFs are coming! Get ready to search and send GIFs in Tweets and Direct Messages: https://t.co/uk75stt1zN pic.twitter.com/1dDD1B4CW2
— Twitter (@twitter) February 17, 2016
Animated GIFs were seen as the the side-product of the early internet days. One of which that became a phenomenon was the dancing baby.
GIF's ability to easily express something silently in a satisfying loop clips are becoming one of the internet's mainstay of pop culture. Their moving images are used more than often to express the good, bad and the ugly internet.
Twitter initially added support for animated GIFs back in June of 2014. And in a year, Twitter was seeing 100 million GIF sharing on its platform. But during that time, the feature wasn't straightforward: users had to download the GIF, then reupload it to Twitter instead of just posting a link to the said GIF. So it wasn't that necessarily great.
With Twitter delivering a way to seamlessly integrate GIF into tweet and DM, fans should rejoice.
"If you're looking for the perfect cat yawn or dance move to express exactly how you feel, just click the new GIF button," said Twitter in a blog post. "You can search by keyword, or browse categories of different reactions like Happy Dance, Mic Drop, or YOLO."
By announcing GIF Search, Twitter is expecting the feature to be heavily used. The move comes a few weeks after Tinder added GIF search to messaging, and about four months after GIF search came to Messenger. GIPHY also offers a popular integration inside workplace messaging app Slack.
Twitter's partnership with GIPHY and Riffsy isn't all about Twitter. With Twitter's new GIF-sharing feature, the two Twitter partners are having the opportunity to potentially sell "promoted GIFs" to advertisers and users. So it's a mutual benefit to the parties envolved.
Added features to Twitter are essentially welcome, especially to those that loves to share on the internet. To Twitter, it's a small tweak that could mean a good change to the company as it's struggling to increase user engagement on the service that has a slowing user growth.