According to its creator it's pronounced ‘Jif’ (with a hard ‘j’) and we have all been saying it wrong (with a hard 'g'). Whatever the pronunciation, its fair to say the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) has had an interesting love affair with the internet.

Invented in 1987 by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite, the GIF was created as a solution to the issue of displaying images on computers while also saving memory. Although the GIF was not designed for animation, its ability to store multiple images in one file lent itself to animation in a very natural way. In the late 2000's, as bandwidth improved, people began using the format to make animated loops and memes out of pre-existing video content.

The format has long been commercialised since the early days of its existence and this has been continued in more recent years with the growth in GIF search engine businesses such as Giphy and Imgur.

In 2020 Giphy was bought by Meta (previously Facebook) for a reported $400 million. Meta has integrated the GIF search engine directly into it's communication platforms like What'sApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram direct messages.

Following on from the popularity of emojis, this integration allows the user to easily use GIFs as a form of personal expression. Giphy founders like to call this "conversational search" where content is used in conversation through messaging apps.

Giphy partners with companies and brands to host content that can be shared as brand marketing. It allows brands pay to promote their GIFs with common search terms. So while we may think our private conversations can't be commercialised - next time we use that latest Netflix show GIF to express ourselves in our WhatsApp group chat - its good to be aware of the the deals that may have been made to have it so perfectly on trend, so readily available, right at our fingertips.

Sample network promotional TV Show GIFs - from Giphy database in my phone through WhatsApp application.