Facebook’s Latest Addition: GIF Button For Comments

Have you noticed that you now have the option of GIF while commenting on Facebook?

After successful test runs, Facebook launched the option for the comment  section on June 15th, to mark the 30^th anniversary of GIF format. Adding GIF to comment was long overdue. The feature was added on Messenger, the social network’s IM service, some two years ago.

13 billion GIFs were exchanged over Messenger over the last year, out of which 400 million GIFs were sent on New Year’s Day 2017 alone!

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The main site however only supported imported GIF URLs from third-party sites such as Giphy.com. The GIF button makes commenting easy and more engaging, especially on mobiles. Facebook may eventually make GIFs available for News Feed posts as the frenzy around GIFs shows no signs reducing.

Well, the GIF button adds amusement to your experience. Facebook reportedly had support for GIFs ready for many years before it was finally added. The makers were skeptical of deploying it because of the visual impact it could have  caused on the News Feed. Despite Facebook’s initial reluctance, users kept finding workarounds to post GIFs. Adding the in-built GIF at long last, thus, made sense.

Overall, users seem to like the new GIF button, given the statistics of usage. For fun, Facebook also ran a poll asking users how should GIF be pronounced, a debate that continues to rage on even though the creator of GIF, Steve Wilhite, has already declared his allegiance to the soft G.

Which of Facebook recent features do you like the best. Stories, GIF, Reactions…let us know in comments below!