GIPHY is one of the go-to places for traditional animated image format, the GIF. But the online database and search engine is moving beyond that when it introduces its first video platform.
When the company soft launches its video platform, it showcases the 118 finalist videos from the first GIPHY Film Fest which was held earlier. The Film Fest have videos put into various categories, including narrative, stop-motion, animated and experimental.
But GIPHY is not Vine and it's far from YouTube.
All participants had 18 seconds to tell their stories, but the time constraint on GIPHY's video platform is a little more relaxed, allowing them to host videos to up to 30 seconds in length that can also be looped.
The video platform is GIPHY's foray into the "future of entertainment," according to a press release. GIPHY hopes that people will find it interesting, and eventually see it as a destination for short-form contents.
The video platform which is set to launch on both desktop and mobile, is capable of showing videos in both HD and SD formats. Users can also add videos to their favorites in a library, and share them outside the platform.
It is meant to stretch the meaning of "animated content" in a way that it can deliver short-form content. The videos contents on the platform are not really GIF, with some having sounds while others don't. They are better rendered, with many not anymore pixelated like typical GIFs. and some even had their own credits.
GIF is a format which can show animated scenes. It has gained in popularity on the web, partly as a nostalgic throwback to the early internet days.
But with the video platform, GIPHY is trying to show that animation can be far more astounding. The platform expands "animation" to short-video form where people can tell much more than when using GIFs.
"Everything now is just this way of expressing through movement what people have been saying in picture form, and it's just evolving," explained GIPHY's film editor Tiffany Vazquez. "There are just so many different ways you can express an emotion with a GIF that you couldn't really do with something as general as 'LOL,' or something as general as an emoji."
While this is the first for GIPHY, the platform is not actually the first to do this.
Short-video form has thrived on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat for years. TikTok with its viral sensation to feature short-video contents have made it one of the most valuable startup ever.
Looking a bit to the internet history, Vine also had a share in popularity, before closing its doors.
For GIPHY, which is already synonymous with GIF, becoming a go-to source for such content would be rather difficult. But initially, GIPHY is working to make the short-form video service a place where people can come, participate and create things that are more than just meme GIFs.