Blog

Facebook Finally Comes Around to Animated GIF Support

In the early days of Facebook, people were able to post animated GIFs as they pleased. However, the ability to share these types of images was removed from the social network nearly a decade ago. It is likely that they were removed because they were either too distracting or their presence slowed the site down. In any case, most other social networks have allowed animated GIFs for quite some time now and Facebook is finally rejoining them by allowing these types of images to be shared once again.

People have been clearly interested in sharing animated GIFs on Facebook for a while now. A couple of years ago, a website called Giphy (which specializes in sharing enormous amounts of animated GIFs) created a workaround that would allow people to embed animated GIFs on Facebook. The effort was promptly shut down by Facebook in an effort to keep the site from being cluttered and chaotic, but it seems that Facebook has changed their mind.

There are a few guidelines that will have to be followed with Facebook’s new support of animated GIFs. Specifically, users will not be able to upload them directly onto their Facebook page. Instead, animated GIFs only work when they have been embedded so that they are linking to an outside source. The GIFs also have to end in ‘.gif’ rather than appearing in any other type of link. Currently, the feature works on the website and on the mobile app, though GIFs only work on personal profiles and not brand pages. Though the feature has not yet been rolled out to all users, it should be available to everyone over the coming days.