GIFs Win Where Words Fail

Sending GIFs

Question: Why are GIFs so good?

Seriously. It’s like instant replay and rewind met up and said, “We go better together.”

We’re living in interesting times. Our conversations are gradually becoming more and more visual, and less textual. We can communicate what we want to say through as little as yellow cartoon faces or through rich media, like photos and videos, all in the same place. Our words – at least on a casual, conversational level – are being outshined by the colorful, in-motion and contextual.

That’s why the only way to describe the introduction of GIFs to Viber is: essential. Is there any better answer to “Does anyone have a ladle that I can borrow” than:

Magician GIF

Probably not.* But it does beg the question of how one would find such a glorious GIF at such an opportune moment.

It’s almost too easy with the new GIF search function we’ve added to the latest version of Viber for Desktop. Begin any new message with @gif, enter the keyword to search and watch the results populate above the text field.

Without a doubt, this will change the way a lot of us communicate on Viber and it’s not the only enhancement with this release. We’ve also found a way to make emoticons more expressive and more fun to use.

Hollywood GIF

*This example was taken from an actual conversation in a group chat between some of us here at the office. Can’t make that kind of thing up.