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"We got duped. That\u2019s right, Giphy told us (and a lot of other people) that now you can put GIFs on Facebook. Once supported on Facebook, the file format, as our story explained, is back \u2014 all thanks to Giphy working with Facebook to make it so.\nExcept that\u2019s apparently not what happened.\nSee also: 10 Tips and Tricks for the Facebook iPhone App\nWhat Giphy is providing on Facebook is not true animated GIFs. And here\u2019s the clincher: Facebook told Mashable Thursday it \u201Cdoes not support animated GIFs.\u201D\nWant clear evidence of that fact? Take a look at the \u201CGIF\u201D shared by Gap on its Facebook page. \n\nPost by Gap.\n\u201CClick below to watch our first GIF on Facebook,\u201D it says.\nThe first sign of trouble is that you have to click to play. That\u2019s not very GIF-like. If you live on Tumblr or have visited any number of other GIF-featuring sites (guilty!), you know they run in a loop \u2014 a never-ending loop and, unless coded otherwise, are usually running when you arrive on the page. There are some GIFs that only play on hover or click, but even the play button on this GIF looks wrong.\nThat\u2019s because it is.\nA right click on the \u201CGIF\u201D bears this out and proves this is a Flash file. Somewhere in the transition from the Giphy platform to Facebook, a conversion took place. This is not a GIF.\nI wish we\u2019d realized this sooner. Mashable was among the many sites that proclaimed the GIF is back on Facebook. Sorry about that.\nOnce we found out it wasn\u2019t a GIF file, we asked Giphy what was going on. They told Business Editor Todd Wasserman it's a GIF in the sense that \"it runs in a continuous loop.\"\nNo. That does not make it a GIF. GIF is a file format. It\u2019s a file type like, a Word Doc (.Doc) or a JPEG (.JPG). By Giphy\u2019s definition, anything that loops could be called a GIF. History repeats itself, so let\u2019s call it a \u201CGIF.\u201D Rollercoasters loop, so let\u2019s call them \u201CGIFs.\u201D\nIn an email conversation with Giphy co-founder and CEO Jace Cooke, I tried to get some clarity. \n\nMe: I'm wondering why you would characterize this as GIF on Facebook when that is not the case.\nCooke: Not really sure I follow your logic. What one shares via Giphy is indeed a GIF, while the embed solution does entail a Flash wrapper. This is indistinguishable from how a YouTube video is embedded. Would you call those not really video files simply because of that use of Flash?\n\nCooke\u2019s logic is flawed since video is not a file format. You can have different kinds of video files (AVIs, MPEG4). Flash can be a format and a wrapper for other kinds of content, including GIFs. But in this case, that wrapper changes the nature and function of the file. The Giphy \u201CGIF\u201D that plays in Facebook mobile (on iOS) is housed in an iframe and has to expand to nearly full-screen to play. Real GIFs play in position.\nNo matter how you slice it, native animated GIFs are not playing on Facebook.\nAlthough Cooke and I were having a semantics disagreement, Giphy does in fact agree with my characterization. I received this crystal clear and very helpful email from Cooke's co-founder and CTO Alex Chung:\n\nFacebook does not support the GIF file format.  They did at one point but then they took out support for it.  People have tried to 'hack' this over the years and Facebook has quickly fixed or removed the hacks.\nWe asked Facebook about GIF support and they indicated there are no current plans to support them natively, so we found a way to 'embed' GIFs using supported Facebook APIs.  Giphy built and launched this on their own using these public API's. We do this right now with a workaround that allows us to wrap all our GIFs in a SWF of MP4 for playing within Facebook posts, Timeline and comments.  \nYou're right this is not native GIF format support but it is the first time you've been able to find a GIF on the Internet and then get it to play on Facebook.  We think that's really awesome.  We hope Facebook will support the .gif native format someday and we are lobbying them to do so but that is up to them.  Until then this method is not a 'hack' but a legitimate approved Facebook publicly supported API. \n\nThere you have it. Maybe a bit of overreaching, but it appears Giphy's heart is in the right place. As for Facebook, the company wouldn\u2019t comment further on Giphy, why it still doesn't support the animated GIF file format and when, if ever, it will.\nImage: Mashable composite. iStockphoto, chpdsgn\n\nThe Evolution of the Facebook Profile\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2005 - The Facebook\nBack in the days when The Facebook was only available to select networks, the News Feed didn't exist. Users hopped between profiles like this one.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2006 - Mini-Feed\nWith the September 2006 launch of Facebook's News Feed, user profiles contained mini-feeds that displayed user activity.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2007 - Interaction\nWhile not a huge year for profile redesign, users began to interact more with each other's profiles -- remember Facebook Gifts?\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2008 - The App Era\nUsers were able to add application tabs to their profiles (e.g. Bumper Stickers). Facebook also introduced the Publisher tool bar, which allowed a user to publish a status update, photo or link to his profile.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2009 - Pages\nA new kind of user profile, Pages launched in 2009. Users could \"become a fan\" of a Page (until 2010, when they could \"like\" a page) to see that individual's or business' updates in their news feed.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2010 - A Visual Redesign\nLate in 2010, Facebook launched a new profile that, up until this week, remained pretty much unaltered. Users took advantage by getting creative with the new photo banner at the top of the page. Also, Facebook told you what friends/fans you had in common in the upper right-hand corner of each page.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2011 - Ticker\nAs of Sept. 20, Facebook's new ticker has the ability to follow a user around to every page, including profiles. The company also introduced a \"View As\" widget in the upper right-hand corner that allows a user to preview how others see her page.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2011 - Timeline\nAnnounced Thursday at Facebook's f8 conference, the new profile will act like a  virtual scrapbook, featuring important milestones that have occurred since your time on Facebook. Compared to the evolution of the social network's profile thus far, this redesign appears the most significant.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n      window._msla=window.loadScriptAsync||function(src,id){if(document.getElementById(id))return;var js=document.createElement('script');js.id=id;js.src=src;document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0].parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);};\n_msla(\"//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#appId=116628718381794&amp;xfbml=1&amp;status=1&amp;cookie=1\",\"facebook_jssdk\");"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/08/29/facebook-does-not-support-gifs/>