Facebook has confirmed that it will begin to officially support GIFs, which will be displayed on both mobile and desktop versions of the social media network.
Users have long been asking for GIF support, and while not everyone will see the changes immediately, in the near future, we should all see animated images on our News Feeds.
"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," said the company in a statement.
The news comes almost a decade after Facebook removed GIF support from status updates, which was done largely because of the impact that GIFs had on the News Feed at the time. Since then, however, the News Feed has changed substantially, as has the use of GIFs, with the moving images now being highly popular on social media and otherwise.
Of course, there are some things to keep in mind when it comes to this added support. Users, for example, will not be able to upload GIFs, but will instead have to link to them. There are a number of databases where links to GIFs can be found, including the likes of Giphy and Imgur, and Facebook ensures users that GIFs can come from anywhere, as long as the link ends in .gif and does not use a shortened link or another custom URL. Users can also only put GIFs in their personal profiles, and for now, the feature will not work on business pages.
The fact that GIFs can only be linked to, while limiting, does ensure that there will be absolutely no learning curve, with users simply having to copy and paste the link to the image into the status bar on Facebook.
Of course, this is likely a ploy from Facebook to try and help make the social media network "cool" again, with reports suggesting that Facebook use is declining among teens. According to these reports, 88 percent of those between 13 and 17 that used social media used Facebook, down from 94 percent in 2013 and 95 percent in 2012. In total, only around 45 percent of teens use Facebook at all, down a lot from the 72 percent reported in 2013.
While the new feature does exist on mobile, some users will find that, depending on the file size, users might need to tap on the GIF in order to have it start playing. This is a feature used by other sites in order to minimize the processing power needed when loading a page.
