Behind the scenes, a war to exterminate it has been raging for years, and it never really ended. Yet the GIF as a filetype, the way we store the library of ones and zeros that computers translate into animation, is quietly embattled. The GIF as an art form-a short and silent loop-has never been more popular than it is right now. A year before that, Imgur-until very recently the de facto image hosting service for the media mammoth Reddit and a $200 million company in its own right-rolled out GIFV, its own attempt to modernize the nearly 30-year-old file format. Giphy, the company that curates that library, raised $55 million dollars in its latest round of funding, bringing its total value to some $300 million. It rules the web.Įarlier this year, Twitter introduced a built-in search engine that offers split-second access to a library of thousands upon thousands of GIFs. Seventeen years later, the GIF not only isn’t dead. Those who knew enough to care deeply about file formats and the future of the web were marching on the gates, armed with PNGs of torches and pitchforks.Īnd yet, somehow, here we are. By Burn All GIFs Day, the GIF was wobbling on the precipice of destruction. On top of that, there were the threats of litigation from parent companies and patent-holders which had been looming over GIF users for five long years before the fiery call to action. It was markedly inferior to virtually every file format that had followed it. Its animation capabilities were easily rivaled by a flipbook. It offered support for a paltry 256 colors.
Had you visited its homepage that Friday, you would have seen the movement’s game plan laid out as plainly as its name: “On Burn All GIFs Day, all GIF users will gather at Unisys and burn all their GIF files.” This, alongside a selection of pointedly anti-GIF imagery-all proudly PNG files.ĭespite the obvious joke of setting files on fire, acknowledged with a winking plea to “extinguish all GIFs before leaving the vicinity,” the anger was real and the mission was earnest: to free the web from the scourge of the GIF once and for all.Īlready more than a decade old and with roots reaching to June 15th, 1987-half a decade before the World Wide Web itself-the GIF was showing its age. Wilhite worked on the GIF, short for graphics interchange format, while working for the online service provider CompuServe in the 1980s. We’re republishing the piece following news that Stephen Wilhite, one of the lead creators of the GIF, died earlier this month after contracting COVID-19. Use the information found in these videos as a starting point for conducting your own research and conduct your own due diligence before making any significant investing decisions.Editor’s Note: This story originally published in March 2018.
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