Brace Yourselves, Facebook Confirms GIF Support
Facebook has geared up to blow its users’ top off.
For the longest time, Facebook has kept GIF support out of the loop. However, leaving no stone unturned, the social networking giant is finally letting users post GIFs into their newsfeed, the NY Daily News reported on Sunday.
But users should not get too comfortable with the news reports about Mark Zuckerberg’s newest add. The GIF feature has just only started to roll out and is still in its early stages. With that being said, unfortunately, business and page owners won’t have access to this feature just yet. Bummer.
But for Facebook users with profiles, the feature is rather simple to use: All you have to do is post a link to your GIF in the status bar and post it. It doesn’t matter where the GIF comes from — Tumblr, Imgur, Reddit or Google Image search — you can post GIFs from anywhere on the web.
In the not so distant past, where Facebook seemingly only cared about videos, users were only able to use the collection of GIFs coming from Giphy.
Additionally, uploading the GIF directly within Facebook is currently not possible. It isn’t known if Facebook has a lost interest in business pages or if it plans on running with profiles first. In addition, the chosen GIF will appear on other Facebook users’ feed according to their video auto-play settings.
Furthermore, Facebook GIFs works perfectly for its native mobile application. However, it doesn’t seem to work on the mobile website. It is also not known whether the GIFs will start to function on Facebook’s mobile version of their website.
Amid all the excitement on social media and from news reports, a Facebook spokesperson gave the following comment to tech blog TechCrunch,
“We’re rolling out support for animated GIFs in News Feed. This is so you can share more fun, expressive things with your friends on Facebook.”
Just earlier this week, a Facebook study conducted by researchers from Brunel University found that Facebook posts or status updates could reveal one’s personality traits — including those with extroversion, openness, narcissism, neuroticism, and conscientiousness.
A lecturer from the University, Dr. Tara Marshall, gave a statement.
“Although our results suggest that narcissists’ bragging pays off because they receive more likes and comments to their status updates, it could be that their Facebook friends politely offer support while secretly disliking such egotistical displays. Greater awareness of how one’s status updates might be perceived by friends could help people to avoid topics that annoy more than they entertain.”
[Photo Credit: Stephen Lam / Getty Images]
