Imgur has introduced GIFV, a new initiative to upgrade animated GIFs to MP4 videos. The formatting difference means that the new file is significantly smaller — as an example, Imgur turned a 50MB animated GIF into 3.4MB GIFV. The argument is that the culture surrounding animated GIFs is bigger than the actual format itself, and a new format is needed for better overall performance.
The cornerstone of Project GIFV is a platform-wide upgrade to automatically convert uploaded GIF files on the fly into the MP4 video format. The converted MP4s are significantly smaller than their equivalent GIFs, which allows them to load at lightning-fast speeds with better quality. By lowering bandwidth consumption, the change also optimizes Imgur for users on mobile. Rejoice!
