Animated GIFS and the Internet

The internet has a long-standing history of both compassion and regret for the animated GIF.

First, an animated GIF is nothing more than a Graphics Interchange Format image, which was one of the first image formats for the web, that has been programmed to progress in a series of frames.

This image, for example, is a 6-frame animation which has been directly lifted from the 1985 Nintendo game "Super Mario Bros" and it repeats.  It is actually 16x16px originally, but has been enlarged to be about 300x300px.  It contains 3 different colors:  a dark brown, a light brown, and black.

Facebook does not allow animated GIFs to run as animations.  Instead, an imported animation will remain as the first frame only.

MySpace used to allow animated GIFs and they took over.  In fact many said that it made the site appear too abrasive in general.

Twitter at one point allowed animated GIFs as profile images, but this ceased to be allowed.  If you installed an animated GIF prior to November 2012, then it works.  But after that point, the service ceased to allow them.

Google+ allows animated GIFs to function as profile icons.  That is sort of a plus.  Because while some animated GIFs can be abrasive, if they're produced correctly they can be quite interesting.  Also, with the disadvantage of IOS (all iPads and iPhones) not allowing Adobe Flash Player to run, making Flash animations unseen on those devices, animated GIFs have a special place in those circumstances.