Skip to main content

Gfycat makes it easier for developers to make GIFs a part of their apps

GIFs: The cute little animated images you just can’t seem to escape, these days. Dancing cats. Alien saucers. Highlights from the previous week’s big game. They are digital zeitgeists, cultural cross-sections of the now. Thanks to services like Gfycat, sharing them is about to become a whole lot easier.

Gfycat, the world’s largest user-generated GIF platform, launched a software development kit earlier this that will let developers tap Gfycat’s millions of animated images. It’s available first on iOS, with an Android component to come down the line.

Recommended Videos

“The Gfycat SDK will enable developers to custom-integrate a GIF keyboard into their app in a single afternoon,” Gfycat CEO Richard Rabbat said in a press release. “As GIFs continue to catch on as a visual language, there is tremendous value to developers in a ready-made keyboard SDK that they can easily integrate into their apps. GIF keyboards increase consumer engagement within apps, and developers are catching on.

A new version of Tango.me, the first service use Gfycat’s SDK, integrates the GIF-sharing service of more than 48.5 million monthly users tightly. Users can share GIFs at the touch of a button and search Gfycat’s selection using a built-in search bar.

It’s a boost for Tango.me, which has struggled to maintain a dominant position in the increasingly competitive messaging market. It boasted an impressive 70 million active users in 2014 and attracted investments from both Alibaba and Walmart, but recently laid off nine percent of its staff.

Tango.me recently launched a new app, Fiesta, in order to streamline development of its flagship product.

“We’ve prioritized high visual quality in our mobile offerings so far, and after working with Tango intensively we’re very pleased with the results,” Tango.me CEO Eric Setton said. “This is a great opportunity both for our users to express themselves using Gfycat’s fun, viral content and for content owners to expose their GIFs to Tango’s users.”

Gfycat, on the other hand, is riding the wave of its successes. In September, it announced a $10 million funding round on the heels of the release of an API platform that allows developers to upload videos and GIFs from any site or app directly to Gfycat.

“The rapid growth of Gfycat’s creator community is a testament to the power of our creation tools,” Rabbat said at the time. “Our users appreciate the speed and simplicity of our platform and we’ve drawn inspiration from our passionate user base to continue improving on the format.”

Kyle Wiggers
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kyle Wiggers is a writer, Web designer, and podcaster with an acute interest in all things tech. When not reviewing gadgets…
Google may make it easier to share files between Android and iPhone
Android 14 logo on the Moto G Stylus 5G (2024).

Wish it was easier to share files between Android and iPhone? Android Authority says a file-sharing service designed for Android devices may eventually become available on Apple products.

During the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, Google announced its collaboration with Samsung to introduce a new feature called Quick Share, which aims to simplify file sharing. This feature offers a unified solution for sharing files across Android devices, Chromebooks, and Windows systems, making the process seamless within these ecosystems. Think of it like AirDrop but for Android.

Read more
AI may soon make it easier to find the right Android app
Samsung Galaxy S24 in Marble Gray showing the Play Store.

Google may be planning to use its AI smarts to make it easier and faster to discover and learn more about apps in the Google Play Store. The first hints about a so-called Ask a Question feature have appeared inside the code of the Play Store app, and while details are thin at the moment, they do match Google’s AI efforts in its other apps.

The code discovered indicates the search and individual app pages in the Play Store may get a search bar powered by AI that will possibly display text saying “Ask a question about this app,” according to a report published by Android Authority that focused on a version of the Play Store app was torn down and examined. Code inside apps can often reveal features being tested internally before any public release.

Read more
Apple is going to make it easier to read App Store reviews
A photo of an Apple screen and a close-up of the App Store icon with three notifications on it.

Apple Intelligence promises to bring a lot of features to the Apple ecosystem, but one of the most exciting of those is text summarization. According to 9to5Mac, Apple plans to bring this same feature to the App Store. You'll be able to see a rundown of the most common complaints and praise for an app before you download it.

There isn't a lot of news about this feature yet, so we're a bit light on the specific details. If we had to make a guess, the system will work similarly to Amazon's product page summaries. The AI-generated review summaries found on most product pages likely follow the same format that Apple's reviews will. It also looks as though Apple will generate the summaries on its own rather than using on-device processing.

Read more