Giphy and Vimeo trade video thumbnails for GIFs
This means no more static pre-roll images.
Ever gone to watch a video online and thought to yourself, "Man, this thumbnail could be a bit more animated?" If so, you're probably going to freak out a bit and think Giphy and Vimeo have been reading your mind. That's because starting today, Vimeo thumbnails will be brief, looping clips rather than static images. Or, as the press release puts it, "Now, you can watch what you're going to watch before you watch it." And given Vimeo's focus on the creator, these GIFs are directly tied to the origin video and feature attribution for the author.
What's more, any existing GIF that sources Vimeo will include the new video playback feature. Given how many GIFs there are online, and how high-quality the ones pulled from Vimeo's silky-smooth clips tend to be, everyone involved stands to benefit here almost automatically. Meaning, if you want to see wherever your favorite GIF came from (with audio!) it shouldn't be all that hard from here on out.
Giphy has been working to expand its presence on the web and become the de facto source for GIFs for the past few years. Whether it's offering easy tools to make them yourself, or, in this case, putting them in unexpected places that makes a lot of sense, the company's mission to be the Netflix is GIFs is moving along pretty swimmingly.
