Imgur wants to replace the antiquated GIF image

Internet culture is dominated by GIFs, and they just got even better. Photo-sharing site Imgur made a big improvement to the GIFs posted on its site by converting the files from the outdated .GIF format to a MP4 video format. Imgur announced Project “GIFV” (GIF Video) on Thursday as a part of an effort to make the files load more quickly and perform better. While the conversion doesn’t change anything you love about GIFs, they’re a lot more efficient.

GIFs are positively everywhere, and have been for a while — there’s no stopping them. But the massive photo sharing service Imgur thinks they can be improved upon and brought forward into the modern age. “Let’s get real, the .GIF format is outdated and is not really that great for the modern web anymore. ” says Imgur founder Alan Schaaf. “It was created in 1989, and it wasn’t even created for the purpose of animation. What we’re trying to do is keep that same experience almost intact but just make the technology around it much better.” To that end, the company is announcing a new way of handling GIFs. Any GIF files uploaded to Imgur are now automatically converted to MP4 video, compressed, and then displayed just as a standard GIF would be.