Twitter Rolls Out GIF Button (usatoday.com) 81
Twitter is rolling out a new GIF button on iOS, Android, and the Web so users can now search for GIFs by keyword. They can then insert them directly into their tweets and direct messages with a single tap. According to Twitter, "more than 100 million GIFs were shared on Twitter last year... [the company] is looking to GIFs as another way to increase engagement on the service that is struggling with slowing user growth."
LOL ... copyright? (Score:2)
So, whose GIFs can you share? Surely sharing on Twitter to share a GIF doesn't give Twitter and the rest of the world the right to use it?
Twitter seems to be assuming anything posted is fair game for everybody else to reuse.
It's All Part of Their Master Plan... (Score:4, Funny)
Since their user base is dropping every month and their investors have gotten out the long knives, they've hit upon this scheme to entice lawyers to join the service and log in frequently, looking for cases they can prosecute on behalf of Big Media clients. Up to this point, lawyers, known for their long-windedness, have shied away from Twitter due to its 140-character limitations...
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Yeah because all those lawsuits against the GIF sharing community.
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Depends entirely on what it's a GIF of, and there's always always always a lawyer lurking.
Are you suggesting that Twitter magically has copyright to every GIF ever posted to Twitter? I'm betting they don't.
You can have a GIF of pretty much anything, including things which are copyrighted.
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I'm suggesting it's not an issue for the same reason people sharing images, gifs, videos, etc isn't an issue for a bazillion other websites that have been in operation for a very long time.
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There were no lawsuits in the 90's involving the sharing of copyrighted gifs. I realize it's cool to hate Twitter, but you don't have a point here.
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Finally! Thank God! (Score:3)
Civilization is saved.
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I think you mis-spelled "doomed".
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I have an account that I created so I could log into a site that required an account linked to a social network.
Only found a couple actual uses for it:
-Play by play updates from things like a utility or DOT during a storm
-Bleeding edge breaking news. Once the city was on lockdown because there was a gunman on the loose. There were updates on that, and rumours when they caught him, then the Police posted on their Twitter that they caught him. This was long before a news release.
Other time sensitive matters.
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It's useless as a crappy substitute for an RSS feeder, or to find out what Justin Bieber is thinking.
Well, there it is, my New Thing for today: a reason to consider getting on Twitter.
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Facebook - Mostly full of people reposting stupid pictures and "heartbreak" stories/pics of photoshopped mangled babies with captions like "Ignore if you want to burn in hell, like if you want to be saved by Jesus, Share if you're God"
Maybe you need to choose your "friends" more carefully.
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~$ fortune | cowsay
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Agreed. Whenever my teamviewer session can't start, I go check twitter to see if other people are having problems. If it's the service in general, I'm less concerned about my own equipment at that point.
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>> Is there anyone here who even uses their Twitter account if they have one?
As a "write only" dump of scheduled thoughts, as part of my job, yes. In the past I've also used it when I'm at a conference to meet up with other people who I want to hang out with for a night, but don't really want to keep in touch with when the conference is over.
>> For you people who hate Facebook, do you hate Twitter or Facebook more?
Twitter, probably. My wife still reads Facebook and communicates with some other
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I hate facebook more at least twitter has a bit of redeeming value that you can use it to contact developers and while most still won't bother to grace you with a reply you are still better off tweeting than email if you want a reply.
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Oddly enough I've found a couple of uses for this.
Companies tend to respond quickly to tweets so it's handy to contact them with questions, etc.
I'm in a 'group' of like minded hobby people that lends itself to the 140 character limit when sharing information.
If not for the second one I wouldn't be on Twitter tho. That's the useful part for me and as long as it stays useful I'll keep my account active.
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I have a Twitter and a Facebook account. I follow NASA, CERN, LHC, JPL, ESA, etc. Occasionally my tablet reminds me I have tweets to read. Even more rarely, I click the notification. Then I wait for the Twitter app to load (no idea why it takes so long but tablet is old) just to realize I've wasted 30 seconds of my life, even with those "channels."
My Facebook account only exists because occasionally people will link me things on IRC I need it to see.
I wouldn't say I hate either. I'm largely indifferent
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A quick check reveals that, loosely grouped, of the 79 people i follow, 27 are personal friends, 18 are authors (because i'm a SF/F nerd,) 7 are what i'm calling group/event accounts (conventions, meetup groups, etc), 5 are musical artists, 5 are minor geeky celebrities, 5 are "joke" accounts (Emo Kylo Ren being one of the most recent examples) 4 are themed accounts (pictures of cute animals, pictures of people doing dumb things, etc)
Why gifs? (Score:2)
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Why the sudden implementation of gifs now? They're about 15 years too late... shouldn't they be pushing for gifv/webm?
Simple. It's because of smartphones and a particular technical limitation about gifs that makes them suitable for viewing on smartphones...
The thing about gifs is that they are unable to play sound, which means you can be 100% sure you can view one on your smartphone without risking notifying everyone within earshot that you're watching this or that video clip.
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The thing about gifs is that they are unable to play sound, which means you can be 100% sure you can view one on your smartphone without risking notifying everyone within earshot that you're watching this or that porn clip.
FTFY
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webm is an avi-like format that allows sound -- do not want. We really should use APNGs instead of GIFs, but crappy browsers don't support them.
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Nope.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The United States LZW patent expired on 20 June 2003. The counterpart patents in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy expired on 18 June 2004, the Japanese counterpart patents expired on 20 June 2004, and the counterpart Canadian patent expired on 7 July 2004. Consequently, while Unisys has further patents and patent applications relating to improvements to the LZW technique, the GIF format may now be used freely.
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Not conservatives, but pretty much anyone that goes against a certain specific small clique that were given the keys of twitter now.
It is just disguised as a political debacle, but its actually "small group of very powerful individuals vs the rest of the world."
GIF or JIF (Score:2)
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heh, anyone else remember when GIF meant pr0n?
And you didn't tweet them, you skeeted [urbandictionary.com] on them.
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G as in Gift.
Billions of dollars (Score:2)
Bring the GIF button to Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)
I for one am really excited about this new feature:
https://i.imgur.com/P82GvlT.gi... [imgur.com]
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pini... [pinimg.com]
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IAintClickinThatShit.jpg
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Where's your sense of adventure?
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Been on /. too long to be goatse trolled. (Every wonder why every URL in a comment has the destination auto-displayed by Slashcode? Entirely because of links to goatse.cx)
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I have too much respect for you and for my own trolling abilities to ever stoop to a goatse troll.
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Certified SafeToClick by Anonymous Coward.
Just what we needed (Score:2)
More cat animated gifs.. #WTF #NoThankYou
hebonicons (Score:2)
for those who are challenged by the use of overly complex things like writing and speaking. How soon until the masses speak a different language on the street and can't even comprehend the language the laws are written in or business is conducted in. Makes controlling them much easier... :(
This post brought to you by the letter
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I've read a couple of articles recently form good sources that predict #Twitter is dying. True? I can only hope so.
I've found Google trends to be a good indicator of popularity.
Twitter vs Snapchat vs Instagram [google.com]
I was surprised that Snapchat wasn't more popular, but you can see Twitter has been in decline since 2013, and Instagram is showing lots of growth (I guess lots of people want to take what improvements we made with digital imaging, and have shitty filters that look like crappy cameras, while they take selfies of their duck-face and their crappy food.
You can see Slashdot has been on a loooong decline into irrelevanc [google.com]
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Oh and GIFs bottomed out in 2011, and have been rising, and are now back up to 2007 levels [google.com]
"Slowing" user growth? (Score:3)
Twitter's hemorrhaging on all counts as they continue to enable and even hire some of the most toxic bigots and abusers on their platform while shadowbanning and harassing those people's victims.
Wow (Score:2)
Wow, a button that lets you insert a GIF. This bold innovation is almost off the scale.
Hard Gee (Score:2)
That's a hard gee, FYI. I don't care who says otherwise.
We said EDIT feature (Score:1)
Which part of #RIPTwitter don't you GET?
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Don't worry, they're busy listening to the serial harasser Randi Harper on how to save twitter, and ignoring the plebs.
You cannot be serious .. (Score:1)
GIFs? (Score:1)
Those are those things you download from CompuServe right?
This will really improve the user experience (Score:2)
Even before, users started to post pictures of big smileys instead of posting just a smiley (or more appropriate: Clicking the fab button without any reply).