Giphy and Instagram today announced they’d be teaming up again to let users insert GIFs into their Instagram Direct messages. Now you can spam your friends with reaction gifs instead of actually formulating your own thoughts — the natural endpoint for all app-based social interactions, at least as far as I’m concerned.
Starting today, Instagram Direct will have a GIF button on the composition bar. When you click on it, you’ll be shown a library of the latest trending GIFs, as determined by Giphy itself. If “trending” doesn’t really suit your needs, you can also search for the exact reaction you want. If you’re feeling lucky, you can just type the general search term and hit “random,” meaning Giphy will send your friend the GIF it deems most appropriate for the scenario.
Giphy’s been sneaking GIF integration into various social media apps for years now, such as Twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat and even the likes of Slack. I use it to bother my coworkers with this little guy on a semi-regular basis:
It’s already part of the Instagram toolkit by way of Story Stickers, which allow you to put moving images on top of your Story posts. So the inclusion of it in the DMs isn’t too drastic of a change.
Giphy also revealed it’d include attribution for verified GIF creators, and users would be able to discover other GIFs by clicking on “More from creator.” For example, this might mean finding new GIFs of your favorite show, though it’ll only be available for verified creators.
The feature will be available for the latest version of Instagram on both Android and iOS.
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