SXSW panel – The Economy of the GIF – #GIFecon

Mr. GIF’s Jimmy Repeat & Mark Portillo, the DailyDot’s Fernando Alfonso III, and Cinegif

We had a great time at the SXSW interactive panel presentation “The Economy of the GIF.”  The moderator and panelists were terrific and the questions from the audience sealed the deal.

The GIF is here to stay and we at Cinegif are ready to turn this trend into an industry!

Here’s an excerpt from a recap of the session by one of our favorite reporters, Addie Broyles, that was printed (yes, newspapers still exist) in the Austin American Statesman on Saturday, March 9, 2013.  Check out the original article online HERE. 

Animated GIFs making a comeback

GIFs, the animated files that used to be so popular in the early days of the Internet, fell out of favor for years as developers left the seemingly primitive form of animation for sexier programs like Flash. But as computers became more powerful and Apple held firm on not allowing Flash to work on its mobile devices, the GIF has come back in a big way.

GIFs are so popular because they are easily digestible. Unlike a video, to watch a GIF, you don’t have to press play, you don’t have to wait for them to load, you don’t have to sit through an advertisement to watch, says Jimmy Repeat, an artist/producer for MTV.

Making GIFs is more of a challenge than making a static image, but the payoff is huge,” says Lindsey Weber, a writer and GIF maker.

“Businesses are taking advantages of GIFs by inserting them into email newsletters and creating their own, which makes them look hip in our GIF-obsessed online culture.

Weber says that Twitter’s six-second video app, Vine, is a great example of just how pervasive GIFs have become.  “Tumblr alone has helped the GIF revival because they make it so easy to embed them.”

Learn more about the session and the background on the panelists at the DailyDot.