GIF, a file format that in 1998 was my favorite one to embed in my first FrontPage projects, because who doesn’t like a spinning globe in their personal site, is now emerging as a lovable and widespread tool to distribute short sound-less animated clips. Look at the fact that all your favorite apps are using it now - you can embed those directly from iMessage, you can embed those on Twitter and Facebook Messenger, and even Slack did not escape the fate of becoming a GIF-powered chat tool - what’s missing from this list is Snapchat allowing users to have embedded GIF reactions. Think of it this way - before Giphy, you needed to go to an image sharing service, search for GIFs and hope that you find what you need in the sea of other non-animated images.