Twitter GIF Search Button Launched

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In the “coming weeks,” thanks to a partnership with two others, Twitter will add a GIF button to iOS and Android apps as well as on its home page in an effort to build engagement with its slow growing monthly users.

Twitter’s partnership with Giphy and Riffsy

When made available, users will  get access to this new feature in the form of a GIF button in the compose tweet window. Hitting this button will allow users to search for GIFs that best fits the sentiment or reaction of the Twitter user. Once an image is selected it will appear directly in the tweet or direct message rather than sending a link which Twitter users are forced to do at present.

There are a number of categories that will be curated by the social site including: “happy dance,” mic drop and YOLO; you will also be able to search for a GIF by keyword if you prefer.

Twitter’s growth and stock have been hit by slowing user growth, so Twitter is doing its best to get the 320 million active monthly users engaging with each other more frequently. It’s clear that Twitter believes that with this partnership they might be on to something. Whether or not they are will become clear in the “coming weeks.”

Twitter’s partners in GIF add their two cents

“So much can be expressed with GIFs, and the key is to find just the right one in the moment that quickly and efficiently expresses your emotions,” said Riffsy CEO David McIntosh.

Speaking of its API which Twitter is employing, Riffsy wrote in a blog post, “This position provides us with a valuable and rich data set that enables us to surface the right content to users based on trends, time of day, location, and more. Relevance is also fueled by user uploads, which have quadrupled over the past few months. How does this translate for our API partners? Riffsy’s focus on exposing the right content leads to a daily use case; 60 percent of Riffsy’s users turn back to us to find and share GIFs five or more days of the week.”

“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. “GIPHY’s users are creating GIFs for news, entertainment, sports, and expression that can enrich Tweets. We’re excited to work with Twitter to make sharing these GIFs even easier.”

The 140-character company seems to want to make these two competitors play nice together.

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