Facebook’s tepid embrace of the GIF format has always struck me as a little strange. But now, it seems like things are thawing up, as the social media giant has finally introduced a gif button to its comment section. So, next time you’re embroiled in a tedious political debate, you can gracefully exit the conversation with one of these bad boys.
From what I can tell, the feature is only available on posts within individual profiles. For company pages, it’s nowhere to be seen. Which is a shame, because leaving a GIF is a lot more expressive than writing “FAKE NEWS” on every single one of my articles. lol, fake news.
Amirite?
The feature arrives on the 30th anniversary of the Graphics Interchange Format, which is truly mental, when you come to think of it. To use it, click the ‘GIF’ button in the comments section, and type what you’re looking for. Facebook will then scour Giphy’s truly massive database.
Given GIFs have been a fundamental part of Facebook’s WhatsApp and Messenger properties (over 14 billion were sent over messenger in 2016 alone), it figures the quirky animated clips would eventually make it to Facebook proper.
My only question is why it took so long? That, and how do you actually pronounce it?
UPDATE: Facebook just released a video that shows you how it’s done.
The company is also wading into the fraught debate about the pronunciation of the word.
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