Facebook wishes a happy birthday to the GIF

When Steve Wilhite created the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) 30 years ago, he never knew that the world would be going crazy over the 8-bit per pixel animated pictures in the second decade of the 21st century. People on social media find it a better way to communicate their messages than a simple text or the lesser expressive emojis. The current proprietary keyboard on Google’s Android devices has an option to implement GIFs in supported messaging platforms. And now, Facebook has also joined the bandwagon as well.

In a recent blog post, Facebook announced the release of a new feature to the platform wherein members can put in GIFs as comments. A new GIFbutton has been added to the website as well as the Facebook app for both Android and iOS. People can choose from the trending GIFs or search for their own.

Facebook has also initiated something known as the GIF party, where popular faces from the internet like Logan Paul, Amanda Cerny, Patrick Starr and many others have created GIFs with variable expressions in front of party backgrounds. Facebook states these GIFs as “unique and shareable morsel of human expression”.

To make it a memorable celebration for all the debaters on Facebook, they have also introduced a debate over the age-old topic – How is the ‘G’ in GIF pronounced as? Is it ‘hard g’ or ‘soft g’? Unfortunately, only US members will be able to participate in the debate. Facebook will reveal the results sometime later.

(Source)