One of the biggest gripes I had with Facebook was the fact that it was quite the hassle to add GIFs in conversations with your friends and relatives on the network. One of the best ways to insert GIFs at the time was to copy a link from the GIF sharing site Giphy and that was not ideal at all.
However, for a while now, Facebook has been testing a GIF button right within the options while composing a status update. Since I was running a beta version of the Facebook app, I knew it won’t be long till the company makes it available to everyone, and they just did.
Facebook announced that they have made GIFs in comments available to everyone on the network. GIFs are great when you want to express yourself in a visual way and they make conversations much livelier.
When you want to share a GIF within a comment, you only need to tap the GIF button and search for the appropriate one. You can also do this while creating a status update where you tap on the purple GIF button at the bottom and search for the appropriate GIF.
That is not all, Facebook also says that they have added exclusive GIFs that features “some of the Internet’s biggest stars.” Giphy Studios created 20 GIFs from celebrities like DNCE, Logan Paul, Amanda Cerny, DREEZY, Patrick Starr, Violet Benson, Wuz Good, Brandi Marie, and Landon Moss as a tribute to the 30th anniversary of the GIF format.
Facebook also took the time to reveal statistics of GIF usage of their Messenger platform. Apparently people sent nearly 13 billion GIFs last year, which is nearly 25,000 a minute. GIF sends on Messenger tripled ii the past year and New Year’s day was the most popular day to send GIFs on the platform (400 million).
Since Facebook is a much bigger platform than Messenger, this stats would be soon eclipsed by the mothership.
