
Introducing GIF search on Twitter - dredge
https://blog.twitter.com/2016/introducing-gif-search-on-twitter
======
xienze
> “GIPHY delivers real-time GIFs as they happen, helping to power Twitter’s
> live commentary and conversation,” says Alex Chung, founder and CEO of
> GIPHY.

Someone built a 30+ person company around animated GIFs. And they say there
isn't a bubble...

~~~
mintplant
They're rehosting loads of copyrighted content, too.

~~~
georgehotelling
That was pretty much how YouTube started. Content ID wasn't part of their MVP.

~~~
minimaxir
Content ID was added _because_ of the legal issues YouTube faced.

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ljk
why are there no legal issues with giphy.com?

~~~
roymurdock
Because they're not making enough money for anyone to care yet.

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minimaxir
It's funny that Twitter is doing a GIF search because Twitter encodes GIFs as
MP4s for bandwidth/performance reasons:
[http://blog.embed.ly/post/89265229166/what-twitter-isnt-
tell...](http://blog.embed.ly/post/89265229166/what-twitter-isnt-telling-you-
about-gifs)

I am assuming from this announcement that Giphy's Series C pitch deck was just
one slide saying "we have a partnership with Twitter; give us money."

~~~
_jomo
When will they add support for long GIFs with sound? /s

There's a weird trend of taking full HD YouTube videos, converting them to
soundless, bad quality GIFs and then upload them to twitter or imgur, where
they're then encoded back to video. Quite often this goes without source to
the original. I assume that people doing this just want to show the important
content on the respective platform rather than sending a link (although
twitter and reddit embed YouTube videos). Or is there another reason?

~~~
schwap
Viewing a gif or mp4 is much more lightweight on mobile than a youtube video.

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
YouTube regularly transcodes all uploaded content into several different
varieties of MP4 container. If you're on iOS, then all videos you watch on
YouTube are MP4s.

~~~
schwap
I don't mean lightweight in a technical sense, I mean lightweight in terms of
user experience. To view a gif (or gif converted to mp4, webm, whatever) I
know it's silent (don't have to worry about muting my phone), I don't have to
load the youtube app or the bloated youtube site. All I do at the most is tap
to play.

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personjerry
What the hell is Twitter turning into? A broadcast Messenger chat? It seems
like to me that Twitter is increasingly promoting the mindlessness often found
on sites like Reddit; In my opinion the attempt to increase the number of GIFs
in an attempt to resume growth to millenials is misguided, and will lower the
quality of Tweets overall (not that it was high to begin with), and will
likely further alienate parts of its existing userbase, as we saw
yesterday.[1]

[1]
[http://www.stephenfry.com/2016/02/peedinthepool/](http://www.stephenfry.com/2016/02/peedinthepool/)

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souraboutlife
How is what GIPHY is doing not just plain copyright infringement? I get the
"search Engine" spiel, though questionable, on their site. But there is no
attribution on Twitter/Slack etc.

~~~
shawabawa3
Don't gifs come under fair usage mostly? Can't claim a 5 second clip of a
show/movie is copyright infringement

~~~
sarciszewski
IANAL but it would probably depend on the GIF itself. Using a particular file
format doesn't waive your rights as far as I know.

~~~
Dylan16807
Well that's obvious and also doesn't answer the question about the "mostly"
case.

Fun to note is the gifs of entire movies in kilopixel resolution.

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kin
If it's something they already had for free and are now
rebranding/repurposing, fine. But, there are many other features I'd rather
have, like better lists, or a more open API for 3rd party apps to build off
of.

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ryandvm
Sometimes I worry that our descendants many centuries from now will refer to
this period of history as, "The Moronic Age."

~~~
theOnliest
[http://www.xkcd.com/1601/](http://www.xkcd.com/1601/)

~~~
ChristianBundy
Playing the curmudgeonly "kids these days" character is a dirty job, but
somebody's gotta do it.

~~~
ACow_Adonis
Its also a beautiful thought terminating cliche that, whether designed to or
not, shuts down introspection into a current society/time.

I get it, Socrates complained about the youth of today, that doesn't mean that
there aren't societies that really need someone to point out the failings of
the current zeitgeist, or that we aren't creating a culture based around
consumerist banalities.

Societies before us didn't have mass-market advertising, industrialisation,
instant communication devices, etc. Pointing out the inanity of our tech scene
and commercial activities, is i think, not only accurate in its assessment,
but I think a much needed cultural critique...

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gdulli
Twitter is becoming worse in every way in order to chase the users of a larger
social network that's worse in every way. The timeline isn't just about to
become disjointed, it's going to become more inane as well.

~~~
sergiotapia
Twitter is all about who you follow. Follow people with similar interests and
it's great. Follow random people and non-suprisingly, the experience is going
to suck.

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artursapek
God bless Twitter - solving the hard problems

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stirner
It's sad to see such an important tech company reinforce the use of an
outdated pseudo-video format like GIF.

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sktrdie
They actually transform the GIF and serve a loop of the mp4 video.

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stirner
Right, as do most "GIF" websites I know of. But they don't allow users to
directly upload MP4/WebM videos, do they? So they still encourage and require
the use of GIF.

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chippy
I hope I'm not the only one who looked on their task bar to see the date
wasn't close to 1 April!

But aside from the seriousness of this feature, I think there's something
crucial here - and it's where emojiis were pointing at - its easier to tell a
story with a picture, and pictures can cross the language barrier. I expect
there to be more and more reaction images / gifs across Twitter, Facebook,
even on hacker news on day. I bet that in 2 years either HN will have animated
gifs, or it will be less busy and people will be somewhere else where there
are some.

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vskarine
Interestingly, Kik did this last year as alternative solution to custom
stickers and emojis other messaging apps have. Looks like this trend is
catching on with other services.

[http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/16/chat-app-kiks-newest-
featur...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/16/chat-app-kiks-newest-feature-
makes-sending-gifs-as-easy-as-emoji/)

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hellameta
Everyone in here acting like Facebook didn't get the exact same backlash for
all the changes they made in the last 5-6 years. You'll recall there was never
such thing as a newsfeed back in the day... Twitter will be just fine. This is
absolutely the right move and you will all forget about this and go back to
tweeting as soon as you're done complaining I'm sure.

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Dylan16807
Is there any way to download the actual GIF yet? Last I looked it was
impossible, which sucks for small-palette aliased animations.

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whatever_dude
Twitter actually doing something their audience wanted and/or could benefit
from? Color me impressed.

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atroyn
I don't understand why they'd choose this particular feature? Which group of
users is this for?

~~~
minimaxir
Millennials.

That is not a snarky response.

~~~
atom-morgan
I'd add startups as well. At a previous company Slack was basically for
sending GIFs all day long.

~~~
minimaxir
Modern startups are typically run by Millennials, so same difference. :p

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ALee
I think Twitter is making the correct move here. It's always been the holy
grail of Vine and others to try to create quick consumable content without
making others create it.

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j_lev
Ironically the 4chan crowd who create most of the world's shareable GIF
content are either banned from Twitter because a feminist got outraged or have
left of their own volition.

~~~
bjacobel
Those darn feminists, always getting so offended by innocent comments from the
fine, upstanding folk on 4chan.

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snorrah
Glad they're focusing on the important issues then.

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ForHackernews
Twitter is definitely going bankrupt in the next 5 years.

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dhiyafaris
ahhaha...love itt

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JohnHammersley
I think Twitter just won the internet

:badger badger badger badger:

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AndrewUnmuted
GIPHY is dealing with gif files, which are much larger and less efficient
bandwidth-wise than silent webm videos, such as those peddled by Gfycat. Why
on earth would GIPHY be the way to go instead of a company looking to improve
the paradigm?

From a technology perspective, dealing in GIF at this obnoxious volume will be
needlessly expensive and difficult to scale.

Perhaps GIPHY has convinced VCs that they are a new medium within the
'storytelling' trend that many brands are latching on to. But I don't see
GIPHY being able to scale this product successfully to the point where they
can start monetizing, without having to abandon their antiquated file format.

~~~
makeee
GIPHY encodes each GIF as an html5 video as well
([http://giphy.com/gifs/FsCMq6RYX4ySk/html5](http://giphy.com/gifs/FsCMq6RYX4ySk/html5)).

