The Internet is home to the graphics interchange format, better known as the GIF. For years GIFs have been used to spread viral – often humorous – visual content across the web, and are widely used on blogs and websites such as Tumblr.
Therefore, it was always puzzling as to why GIFS couldn’t be directly uploaded on to Twitter. Well, that’s all changed now as Twitter has introduced the ability to directly share and view animated GIFs on Twitter.com, as well as its official Android and iPhone apps.
Although GIFs were supported on the service before, they required users to upload them through the third-party service Giphy.
With today’s update, users can forego that option completely and upload GIFs directly from all of your devices.
Looking at the updated version of Twitter, however, it seems these clips won’t play automatically in your stream (as they would do on Tumblr). Instead, similar to other uploaded video clips, such as Vines or Youtube videos, users will need to press the “view photo” or play button to see them.
Certain clients have been excluded from the GIF party at present. Consequently, TweetDeck, Twitter’s official Mac app and Windows Phone devices do not support the visual bafoonery yet.
Check out a Twitter GIF in action below:
Twitter now supports animated GIF images. http://t.co/dm1tauVci9 http://t.co/o3VqdB3Gi8
– MB’s AllTw!tter (@alltwtr) June 19, 2014
So, deal with it and start creating your own GIFs for Twitter now!