Twitter has finally taken the plunge into the world of GIFs, now allowing you to search through options while you’re sending a tweet.
Partnering with Giphy and Riffsy, Twitter will soon let you scroll through countless GIFs to find the one that best suits your mood. Or, more likely, one of an actor looking dumbfounded in a film.
The rollout has already begun, although it hasn’t reached everyone just yet. So, as yet, I can’t properly add this Cat Party GIF to my tweet about cats having a party, so I may as well not send it.
Or this weird Twitter, Taco thing.
Soon to feature on Android, iOS and on Twitter.com, the feature will basically open up as a search bar in your tweet, letting you search for what suits your whimsy.
You can search by keyword or browse categories of reactions, such as party, mic drop, or “happy dance”. GIFs can be added in both tweets and direct messages.
The button for GIFs will be beside the ‘add photo’ and ‘add poll’ buttons that you see today.
If you think this is something small, the figures say otherwise. Last year, more than 100m GIFs were shared on Twitter – with this change, expect that number to be dwarfed in 2016.
Also, with Tinder and Messenger doing something similar recently, Twitter really had to get its act together.
The GIFs are coming! Get ready to search and send GIFs in Tweets and Direct Messages: https://t.co/uk75stt1zN pic.twitter.com/1dDD1B4CW2
— Twitter (@twitter) February 17, 2016
Main Twitter image via Prathan Chorruangsak/Shutterstock; GIF images via Twitter’s blog.
