14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter has taken its sweet time to introduce GIF support to its platform, but the feature is finally here, much to everyone’s happiness.
Up until now, this was possible only with the help of Giphy, but that was certainly not as gratifying as sharing your own files rather than the ones hosted by the aforementioned website.
It was about time for Twitter to step into the present and introduce native support for these animated files, especially since they are so popular on a number of platforms, such as Tumblr.
You can now go to Twitter.com or use one of its mobile apps and share the GIFs you love or those that fit the conversations you are having online.
To be fair, Twitter has adopted a pretty smart method of applying this new feature. While you’re browsing your timeline, you won’t actually see the GIFs, because this would cause plenty of issues with one’s network usage and could even slow down the entire page loading process for those with slower Internet connections.
Instead, if you want to see the GIF inside a post, you’ll have to click the message and let it load separately. In this manner, everyone chooses what content to see.
Starting today, you can share and view animated GIFs on http://t.co/wJD8Fp317i, Android and iPhone. http://t.co/XBrAbOm4Ya
— Twitter Support (@Support) June 18, 2014
As mentioned, this is a really good development for Twitter and it could attract even more fans to the platform, especially those who often post such files to other platforms. After all, hard-core Tumblr fans for example, have entire collections of GIFs to match various reactions they may have to posts made on the platform. I’m pretty sure they’ll put them to good use on Twitter now.
Even better is the fact that Twitter could inspire other platforms as well. For instance, it would be great if Facebook allowed this as well and it might just happen if things go well for Twitter.
Of course, people can still upload GIFs on Facebook with the help of Giphy, just like on Twitter, but that’s not enough for those who have gotten used to expressing themselves in this manner, be it to replace an emotion or to simply add an amusing reaction to one thing or another.
It would be nice to see more support for GIFs on popular web platforms, especially since the file format is not exactly a novelty, with it being around for decades. Alas, we’re still a bit far from this happening, but there’s hope that it won’t really be that long.