Facebook tests GIFs in comments like it’s 1995

This isn’t the first foray into animated GIFs for Facebook, of course — it’s been possible to use them as posts since 2015. Letting users comment on posts with this hot form of visual expression just shows how ubiquitous they have become. Love them or hate them, animated GIFs are everywhere, showing up in major messaging platforms like Apple’s Messages and Facebook’s Messenger. Heck, even Twitter has them, letting users of the short-text service express themselves in looping animations instead of just letters, numbers and emojis.

“Everyone loves a good GIF and we know that people want to be able to use them in comments,” a Facebook spokesperson told Engadget in an email. “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.”

Facebook should begin testing comment GIFs next week with a small percentage of users. It will work similarly to the way GIFs work in Messenger right now, with some sort of search interface. Whether it rolls out more broadly to everyone at some point will of course depend on how well the test goes. If you’re one of the lucky few that gets the ability to comment with GIFs, though, we may blame you when they take over all of Facebook.