Despite yesterday’s announcement that Twitter (TWTR) now allows users to share animated GIFs, it turns out TWTR really meant GIF-like animations.
It didn’t take long for technology enthusiasts to realize that the animations now supported by TWTR aren’t actually GIFs — a standard image compression format for short animated or video clips that shows endlessly repeated loops. In fact, TWTR’s version of animated GIFs are, in fact, just MP4 video files, TechCrunch notes.
The reason TWTR is using MP4 files instead of actual GIFs is due to compression. GIFs have been around for decades and use outdated compression algorithms, thus they tend to be relatively large files. MP4 files, by contrast, offer better quality at a fraction of the file size. By using MP4 files instead of GIFs, Twitter is increasing the speed at which the animations load, while simultaneously cutting bandwidth usage.
Even if users upload an actual GIF to TWTR, that file gets converted to an MP4 before it is posted on the service. However, since the MP4 format displays the animation just as well as the GIF, the formatting switch is unlikely to bother most TWTR users.
Twitter’s adoption if GIFs — or, rather, GIF-like animations — leaves Facebook (FB) as one of the few remaining social media holdouts to the animated files.
TWTR share fell more than 2% in Friday morning trading.
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