Does your Facebook News Feed leave you at a loss for words? Is a Like simply not enough? Do "wow" and "angry" emoji seem a little basic? It seems that the social network is about to answer everyone's prayers, because SelectAll reports that Facebook is testing a brand-new GIF search feature. When words just aren't enough, let a menagerie of cute animal GIFs or an entire buffet of movie clips do the talking for you.
"Everyone loves a good GIF and we know that people want to be able to use them in comments," a Facebook insider told TechCrunch. "So we’re about to start testing the ability to add GIFs to comments and we’ll share more when we can, but for now we repeat that this is just a test."
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Like iMessage and a slew of other social networks, Facebook will be integrating a GIF search into its comments field. The new feature is still in its testing phase and will only be available for a very small percentage of users at first, but those with access will be able to comb through Giphy and Tenor for the perfect moving images. Getting ready for a GNO? How about this? Did one of your BFFs just suggest a pre-brunch hike? We've got you. And what about brunch itself? It's happy to see you.
According to SelectAll, the GIF interface will be nearly identical to the GIF button in Facebook's Messenger app, so if you're familiar with that, you should have no problem using the new addition.
Facebook will relegate GIFs to comments only, so don't expect to see them all over your feed in between those overhead cooking demos and cat videos. Facebook doesn't want your News Feed cluttered with GIFs just yet, but TechCrunch notes that the comments feature does lay the groundwork for that if the social network ever changes its plan.
If the test goes well, the GIF search feature should get a wider release. That means that comments could soon fill with reaction GIFs. If that's not reason enough to celebrate, we don't know what is.