Yesterday was a horrible day. We had shootings in Alexandria, VA and San Francisco. Then we had an inferno in London. There was also a deadly mudslide in Bangladesh. But I’m here to talk happy news. As in happy birthday GIF.
So GIF means Graphics Interchange Format. On June 15, 1987, Steve Wilhite created the GIF. In 1987, he worked at CompuSave. The company asked him to make color images for files people can download. So in 1987, he came up with GIF. But it didn’t really take off until 1995, when the Internet started to take off. It got the loop ability, making it popular. It also helps that at this time, CompuSave was the first major ISP.
So for 15 years, GIF’s popularity went up and down. But it really skyrocked since 2010, thanks to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp. They’re fun to send in text messages too. Let’s look at how popular GIF’s are in today’s society. People send 25,000 GIFs every minute. In fact, the number of these photos tripled in the past year. Facebook is getting into the Happy Birthday GIF spirit. They’re rounding up twenty Internet stars, people You Tubers Logan Paul and musicians DNCE. They’ll be others. You can even cast a vote about how you pronounce GIF. Happy birthday GIF!
But about this debate though. It even goes on in our Boston computer service shop. I pronounce it Jif (like the peanut butter). But other collegues and customers insists it’s pronounced with a hard G. The world may never know. However, we can thank Steve Wilhite for changing the computer landscape forever. Everyone in computer repair uses the GIF. Come to think of it, most people outside of computer service use the GIF. They’re fun, easy to communicate with, and at times, can be powerful. So Happy Birthday GIF. What’s your favorite GIF moment?