social media gifs are social media gifts

You’ve surely seen the word “GIF” or heard of an animated GIF before but what is a GIF and what does it do? GIF is an acronym that stands for Graphics Interchange Format. GIFs are essentially moving images and these moving images have revolutionized today’s most popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

​If you’ve ever wondered how to engage more users on social media, GIFs may be part of your solution.

What’s makes GIFs special?
As moving images, GIFs  serve as interactive engagement tools extended from you to your audience. Instead of long, drawn-out responses, many modern texters, tweeters and Facebook posters prefer to just respond in emoji or meme form. GIFs are an upgrade from this as they move in a manner similar to video files but with much smaller file sizes. Thousands of new GIFs are created every single day from buzzworthy moments in pop culture and you can even use websites or software to create your own.

What is the difference between an animated GIF and a video?
An animated GIF displays multiple frames in succession and are limited in their array of available colors. GIFs also do not include sound whereas videos usually do.

Where did GIFs come from?
GIFs may seem fairly new but in fact, the file format was created by CompuServe in 1987.
Twitter includes gifs in actual site

What devices support GIFs?
One of the reasons that GIFs were created and remain in use is because of compatibility. GIFs are compatible with almost every browser and display.

What social media sites support GIFs?
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all have GIF support. Twitter has led the way in the GIF revolution even going as far as to include a library of GIFs stored on their site that you may select and add to your tweets at any time. Not only does Google+ support GIFs but you can also make your profile image an animated gif. Instagram doesn’t exactly support GIFs but you can easily convert a GIF into an MP4 file and use it just the same.

Next time you are looking to grab someone’s attention an animated GIF may be the perfect solution. And remember, yesterday is history, tomorrow a mystery and today is a GIF… or something like that.