The downside? The format is nearly 30 friggin’ years old, and its age shows in maaaany ways. The upside? It works pretty much everywhere. It was introduced in 1987, picked up animation support around 1989, and… hasn’t really changed since. You see, for all of its ubiquity and seemingly recent popularity, the GIF is an antique. Why? Compression, compression, compression. While the GIF/MP4 difference may seem trivial, it’s actually a pretty damned smart move on Twitter’s part. Even if you upload a GIF, it’s converted into an MP4. They’re MP4s, embedded with the HTML5 video tag. They’re technically not even really image files in a strict sense - they’re more like video files without sound.

Quite the contrary.Īs noticed by the folks over at Embedly, the “GIFs” that end up in your Twitter feed aren’t actually GIFs at all. But there’s a catch! What Twitter ends up showing you isn’t actually a GIF at all. Just yesterday, Twitter started supporting animated GIFs. What’s in a format? Does that which we call a GIF by any other name invoke just as many lols?

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