Giphy, the search engine for all things gif, has today released a new app called Giphy Cam that lets users create their own gifs to send or share on social media.
“Giphy has always wanted to solve the problem of finding gifs online and making it easy to share them anywhere, which is clear from our work with messenger apps and communications platforms,” said Julie Logan, Queen Glitter Bomb at Giphy. “The next natural step was focusing on creation. Now that people can find great gifs, we want them to be able to create their own moments and share those, too.”
With Giphy Cam, users can record a short gif that is shareable via text message, or across social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest. Users also have the option to save them to their camera roll.
The new app also lets users add fun effects and filters to their gifs. For example, you can add a super pixelated filter to the gif, or a black and white filter, or a fun overlay that makes it rain cash or tips up a cocktail. Cheers!
However, unlike other media creation tools, Giphy Cam doesn’t have a consumption layer. There is no feed within the app, nor is there a follow/friend structure in place.
“It’s not a social network,” Logan tells me. “It’s a creation tool.”
Gifs created within Giphy Cam are meant to be sent out into the world.
The maximum length of a gif is five seconds.
When sharing via iMessage or Twitter, where .gif files are supported, the Giphy compression software maintains the .gif file structure. However, when sharing to a platform like Instagram (that doesn’t support gifs), Giphy switches the file over to a looping video so that users can still share.
Giphy launched out of betaworks back in 2013 with the first search engine exclusively built for gifs. Integrating with various media platforms, Giphy made it easy to embed these gifs and share them across the web and social media.
Over time, Giphy has grown to be somewhat collossal, raising $17 million at an $80 million valuation in January of this year. The company has also integrated with Slack, Gmail, and Facebook Messenger to turn gifs into yet another communications medium.
With Giphy Cam, users can add to the growing trove of gifs available to share on the web.
If you want to check out Giphy Cam, head over to the App Store.
