Prepare yourselves — Facebook now has serviceable GIF support.
Your Facebook News Feed will soon become much more animated (Hooray). GIFs were once supported on the platform in the early days and now that they are bigger than ever, they have returned! Plus, virtually every other major social service now supports GIFs, so it’s sort of time for Facebook to jump back on the bandwagon.
First things first, GIF links, not GIF uploads.
The feature works with GIF links, not GIF uploads. If you try to upload an animated GIF from your computer or mobile device, Facebook will convert it to a still image. To make the magic happen, you need to paste a GIF file link into the “status update”. For most services, you’ll see an inline, real-time preview of the GIF embed.
Also, your “Auto-play” settings determine whether the animated GIFs in your News Feed will be played automatically.
And None for Facebook Pages
While Profiles cannot upload GIFs, they have a workaround in pasting the link to get the party started. Facebook Brand Pages aren’t so lucky. The rulers of Facebook do not allow Pages to post animated GIFs yet. GIF links only work for personal profiles. (Trust me I tried it, immediately.)
Test Drive, Vroom Vroom…Screech!
In my efforts to make GIFs work on the 5 Stones Media Facebook page, I got a (somewhat promising) embed image that originally looked like it would work — it ended up defaulting to a standard Giphy link, taking you to a new tab when you clicked it to allow you to view the link. #LifeRuined
I expect Facebook will eventually allow Pages to utilize GIFs too. However, that introduction of animated GIFs in the News Feed from brands will probably have mixed reactions. Personally, I think animated GIFs make social media posts more interesting. I’m excited to see how brands use them and to use them in our own marketing for 5SM and our clients! Until then, we wait!
