But an increasing number of companies are starting or investing in mobile GIF creation software. Most recently is the social video sharing site, Vimeo, which acquired the iPhone app Echograph that allows users to create and share GIFs.
“We’re always looking for ways for people to create great video content,” said Vimeo CEO Kerry Trainor, “and we really feel like the GIF format overall really represents an interesting connecting tissue between what people typically think of as video and what people typically think of as still images.”
Now this seems odd — video taking the step backward into a still-ish medium — until you think about it this way: A majority of all video and photos made today are created on mobile phones, and what’s more exciting than a picture and easier to share than a video? A GIF.
Within that context, Vimeo’s acquisition seems like a smart bit of forward thinking. This is especially true with Twitter’s newest venture, Vine, which allows users to share short, looping videos, kind of like GIFs.
Through Echograph, users shoot a short video, then choose one frame of the video to stay still and pick the spot to animate with the swipe of a finger.
So with GIFs in sort of a grey area, how does this software fit in with a video sharing tool like Vimeo?
“This is a new area of video creativity that we think bridges the gap between video and still photography,” Trainor said. “This is something that we want to get behind.”
Trainor said that the mobile phone is the default digital camera and video camera for many people, and the challenge is using the technology to allow users to create better videos.
“Mobile is such a growing part of everyone’s world, we’re looking for those breakthrough features,” Trainor said. “We’re not necessarily betting the farm that GIFs are going to be it, but we absolutely feel that it’s going to be in that quiver of experiences people are going to want to have in video.”
Right now the only difference users will see is the Echograph app, which was $2.99, is now free. On the business side, Nick Alt, who created Echograph, is now the head of all mobile products for Vimeo. But the exact way that Echograph will fit into Vimeo is still being figured out.
As more and more companies jump into this mobile/GIF fray, it seems that a social media site specifically made to share GIFs could be right around the corner. Though Trainor didn’t say yes or no to the idea, he seemed to be open to it.
“I don’t know that I see a full-blown, free-standing social network emerging around these, but that’s something that we’ll just have to wait and see,” Trainor said.
And while a handful of artists and graphic designers have found ways to monetize the animated GIF, Trainor said Vimeo doesn’t yet have a business model mapped out for GIFs.
