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The GIF Turns 30: How an Ancient Format Changed the Internet

The GIF Turns 30: How an Ancient Format Changed the Internet

The GIF Turns 30: How an Ancient Format Changed the Internet

Business, Spoken · SpokenLayer

June 1, 20179m 32s

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Show Notes

The web’s favorite file format just turned 30. Yep, it turns out the GIF is a millennial, too. At the same time, 30 makes the GIF ancient in web years, which feels a bit weird, given that the proliferation of animated GIFs is a relatively recent phenomenon. Today, Twitter has a GIF button and even Apple added GIF search to its iOS messaging app. Such mainstream approval would have seemed unthinkable even a decade ago, when GIFs had the cultural cachet of blinking text and embedded MIDI files.

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