GIFs are great. They’re quick, expressive bundles of pop-culture emotion that let us express ourselves on the internet. But finding the perfect GIF can be a hassle, so Twitter announced today that they were upgrading their previously-clunky media embedding system with a GIF-search function, allowing users to drop in any media from the encyclopediac archives of Giphy and Riffsy.
Users, predictably, celebrated with lots of GIFs.
Of course, major updates take time, and not everyone was first in line at the GIF store. Some resorted to tautology as their only outlet.
The update comes in the middle of what has been a rough winter for Twitter, with several media outlets diagnosing the app with a terminal case of user base boredom. Never fear, says Twitter, GIFs are here!
The update also includes the ability to send short videos in direct messages, which Twitter obviously intends for friends to use to make each other jealous with vacation videos, but will actually just give people sliding into DMs another medium to be creepy in.
Currently, sharing videos only works on iOS and Android, but the GIF-option should come out on the website client as well for everyone over the next few weeks. Twitter joins Gmail and now Microsoft Outlook in the GIF-game, which looks to be hot real estate this year — Giphy just announced its total value has hit $300 million.
Here’s Twitter’s GIF-heavy announcement of the new program.
