This article was published on February 10, 2015

GifYouTube is on a mission to make every GIF link back to its source


GifYouTube is on a mission to make every GIF link back to its source

GIFs are basically everyone’s favorite thing, right? One of the most frustrating things, though, is when you see a great GIF and wonder where it came from in the first place. Sometimes, it’s impossible to even trace it.

GIFYouTube is on a mission to fix this, as well as create a type of Product Hunt/Reddit for GIFs. Now when you create a GIF using the service you’ll get a new type of GIF that has sound and can be clicked to head back to the source video.

You can still grab the plain-old GIF if you want, but now you have the additional option to embed the GIF along with sound and the ability to click to get back to the source. The new embed type is a little rough around the edges, but is a great look at what could be the future of GIFs.

The site started life as a simple YouTube to GIF converter which allowed you to put “gif” in front of any YouTube URL and get a moving image back. Today’s new features are to turn it into an even better way to share and discover GIFs.

When users create a GIF using GifYouTube, they’re now given a unique page for sharing and other users can upvote or downvote the GIF, just like on Reddit. If it catches on, it might be the best place to get the most popular GIFs.

GIFs are a hot space right now, with GIF search engine Giphy announcing it raised $17 million in January and Imgur creating its own new format for the images called GIFV.

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The site was founded by two Harvard undergraduate brothers and had over 1.2 million GIFs created in the first seven months.

Rory O’Reilly, co-founder of GifYouTube, told me that they want to help people discover videos from GIFs so that they’re always able to find the source. The team of three that runs the service have taken time off school and is working on it full-time after receiving a small seed round.

➤ GifYouTube

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