Facebook wants you share lots of GIFs on Messenger and has hence quietly begun testing of a new feature on its Messenger platform, that lets users to find GIFs and stickers in a single place and share them in just two taps.
The search feature, first discovered by Mashable, is currently being rolled out for specific Canada users, who are seeing a small magnifying glass button on the compose message interface inside Messenger. Pressing the icon lets you search for appropriate GIFs(from GIPHY and Riffsy) and stickers based on target keywords like a person’s name, a movie title, a location, even how you’re feeling.
The entire process of sharing GIFs is far less tedious than the existing procedure for the same. The current scenario requires users to tap on “More” while composing a message and select the GIF, provided he/she has installed the right app for it. The only downside ? You get a limited number of GIFs to choose from.
A Facebook spokesperson has confirmed that a wider variety of apps will be incorporated to add to the utility of this nifty-little feature to counter claims that the ‘selection of content was pretty limited.’
“GIFs have seen success as a rich media format within Messenger,” a company spokesperson spoke on the devlopment. “With this feature, we’re testing various ways to make it even easier to send great content — like GIFs — with just a few taps.”
In March this year, Facebook had confirmed third-party integration in the mobile messaging app at the F8 conference, making Messenger a platform in itself boasting of more than 40 apps like ESPN, Stickered, Bitmoji, Ditty, Fotor, Sound Clips, Giphy, FlipLip, ClipDis, and Memes.
The GIF phenomenon has caught the Internet world’s fancy and tech companies want to leverage it to transform the way people communicate. Tumblr too had introduced GIFs and Twitter recently set GIFs in AutoPlay mode by default.
Since these are test features, there’s no saying when they will roll out to Messenger’s 700 million strong and counting userbase.
The development clearly indicates how focused the social media giant is on Mobile, and Messenger is playing a stellar role in its evolution as a mobile communication company. The company has been trying hard to woo users to use Messenger, which includes video calling as well and recently even got its own game, Doodle Draw. And since the giant obviously wants more users, other than just Facebook’s massive user base to get hooked to Messenger, it introduced non-Facebook sign-up to Messenger.
