Whether it’s Leonardo di Caprio toasting to your triumph, Justin Timberlake’s disappointment, or a standing ovation, GIFs have made a lasting mark on our communication methods… even in our professional channels. Talkspirit, the first French enterprise social network, sheds light on this phenomenon.
GIFs (short for graphics interchange format) are successions of images or short video sequences that cycles endlessly. They first appeared on the web in 1993, when the Mosaic web browser was the first to allow the integration of images (and thus GIFs) into web pages.
Gradually, they became widely popular communication format—especially via social networks to express emotions and feelings. GIF users are numerous: last year, Giphy and Tenor (the two main GIF image banks) each had nearly 300 million monthly users. Tenor reports that it records nearly 12 billion requests each month.
Also read: The Enterprise Social Network: THE Good Idea for Improving Your Internal Communication
When GIFs takes the complexity out of internal communication
Although they’ve traditionally been more popular in informal communications, GIFs have gradually conquered their place within companies, both
in informal, day-to-day exchanges and more formal communication channels. Whether in emails or enterprise social networking, GIFs capture feelings and enable sharing them, allowing us to mark certain events.
Here’s a GIF to celebrate a return from maternity leave!
“At Talkspirit, at least 80% of our employees use GIFs. Their use became possible as early as 2016. Everyone uses them to share good news, welcome a new employee, or comment on current events with a touch of humor. I regularly post a GIF to congratulate an employee, salute an initiative or share a good result,” says Talkspirit CEO Philippe Pinault.
For Delphine Michel, head of communications at EXTEAM, a consulting and digital engineering firm specializing in research, GIFs have become an integral part of the company. They are used regularly, especially to convey emotions or a strong message: “A picture is worth a thousand words, so a moving image… !”
Figures prove it: according to figures from Talkspirit’s IT department (enterprise social network software publisher), the number of GIFs exchanged each month on its own customers’ platforms has risen 39.7% from last year.
The GIF revolution is on its way, and nothing will stop it!
*
* *
Come on, it’s the end of the day… time to go home. WOOHOO!
GIF credits: tenor.com
– Authors: Sylvia Guirand, Benoît Renoul
