In recent years GIFs have saved humans the trouble of finding the right words to describe their thoughts or verbalize their emotional state. They also gave them the opportunity to go creative – and wild at times, and viral at others – making and spreading short animations on social network. 

From Twitter to Tumblr and Instagram to YouTube, online platforms have facilitated GIFs ruling our communications, but Facebook seemed to have lagged behind – that is until now.

The social networking service has finally joined the flock by beginning to test a GIF maker, over two years after enabling users’ News Feeds to support GIFs.

The new feature can be found in the Facebook camera  at the top of the screen – however, so far access to it seems to be the prerogative of some iPhone users as CGTN Digital failed to use the new GIF-maker. 

There has been no official comment from Facebook leaving space for speculations to swarm around.

Facebook icon displayed on an iPhone. /VCG Photo

The newest addition to Facebook mobile app allows users to shoot footage which could be saved in GIF format on the device’s photo gallery and used as a profile on one’s Facebook profile or as part of their Facebook Story.

The Next Web first broke the news, to users’ delights (except obviously those who use Android systems, and those unlucky iPhone users).

The length of these short clips that roll on a loop can only last for a few seconds.

A full range of effects and frames from Facebook camera can be accessed while making the animated pictures.

This is not the first time for Facebook users to get their hands on GIFs. 

Facebook started to suggest GIFs depending on certain keywords. /CGTN Photo

The California-based social media company introduced the "GIF comment" feature a month ago to mark the 30th anniversary of the Graphics Interchange Format. When commenting, users can click the "GIF" button in the input area of the keyboard, type what they are looking for, and select recommended GIFs.

Another tech giant that is obsessed with GIF-related features is YouTube. The video-sharing website rolled out in June GIF-like video thumbnails which show users a three-second preview of the video while browsing on the desktop.

Video preview on desktop version of YouTube. /YouTube Photo

The preview is automatically created with an AI software from the first half of the clip without any input from the video creators. Producers of the video are not able to decide what preview is shown, and videos under 30 seconds are not eligible for the feature.

The platform has been enabling a growing share of users to see previews on their YouTube homepages, search results, watch pages, subscriptions tabs, and trending tabs, YouTube said in June 30 statement.