When communicating via devices, we often want to convey complex feelings in an instant, and we don’t want to faff about with fiddly little keyboards. With their dynamic images and amusing straplines, animated GIFs allow us to do just that – in a sense, we’re using other people’s reactions to represent our own.
When a team of researchers at Yahoo! Labs analysed millions of Tumblr posts, they found that those with GIFs were the most engaging, and interviews with the users showed that the immediacy of the GIFs, their story-telling capabilities and their utility for expressing emotions were three of the main factors behind their popularity.
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Asked by: Luc Meadows, via email
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