While the GIF format has been around for many, many years, it seems that in recent times they’ve become more popular thanks to animated GIFs being served up as an alternative to embedding videos, especially if the clip is short and straight to the point. It has also been used as hilarious memes with actions usually taken out of context.
That being said if you love the idea of being able to post a GIF on your Facebook status, you’re in luck as Facebook has finally allowed it. Prior to this, users could post GIFs in their status updates, it just wouldn’t be animated. Users who wanted animated GIFs would then have to rely on third party services which weren’t officially supported.
However in the latest change by Facebook, users can now post GIFs easily. Basically all they’d need to do is paste a link of the URL in which the GIF is hosted, and Facebook will automatically display it complete with animation. The downside is that the image needs to be hosted somewhere else so if you don’t have an image host, you will need to create one, either that or you could hotlink it to other websites.
The posting of these animated GIFs are also limited to individual users, not Pages, so for now you can rest easy knowing that your favorite brands won’t be flooding your News Feed with a variety of animated GIFs.
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