Gfycat.com shuts down on September 1 and all Gifs will be taken down - gHacks Tech News (2024)
Popular animated gifs hosting service gfycat.com is shutting down on September 1, 2023 and all hosted content will no longer be accessible at that point.
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The service is one of many that is used by Internet users to upload and share animated gifs on the Internet. Founded more than eight years ago, Gfycat has risen to popularity and is widely used in some Internet communities.
The official website of the service informs users about the shutdown. There, the company writes: "The Gfycat service is being discontinued. Please save or delete your Gfycat content by visiting https://www.gfycat.com and logging in to your account. After September 1, 2023, all Gfycat content and data will be deleted from gfycat.com"
Existing users have time until September 1, 2023 to save their uploaded animated gifs for safekeeping. On September 2, 2023, all data will be deleted from the company's servers and will no longer be accessible.
Any image embedded on third-party sites will no longer display either and show an error instead. Uploaders may download their animated gifs from the service and upload it to another, and then change the embed codes of their posts to keep the images visible.
Gyfcat banned adult content in 2019 in the app and created a new service, called redgifs, for that. This service was later sold to another company.
The service was acquired last year by Snap, makers of Snapchat. Gfycat is not the only animated gif service that has been acquired recently. Meta, owner of Facebook, tried to acquire the popular service Giphy but was blocked to go forward by regulators. Meta had to sell Giphy at a $260 million loss to Shutterstock as a consequence.
Snap has not made an official announcement regarding the shutdown of Gfycat.
Here are some Gfycat alternatives
Giphy -- While now part of Shutterstock, Giphy remains available at the moment on the Internet.
Imgur -- One of the oldest standing sites that allows users to upload animated gifs and images.
Kikliko -- Animated Gifs with sounds support is what sets this site apart from many others.
Tenor -- Another site that allows users to upload animated gifs and embed them into third-party sites.
Now You: do you use another site for hosting animated gifs?
Gfycat.com shuts down on September 1 and all Gifs will be taken down
Description
Popular animated gifs hosting service gfycat.com is shutting down on September 1, 2023 and all hosted content will no longer be accessible at that point.
On May 22, the TLS certificate was renewed, with a Snap Inc. spokesperson describing it as a "temporary issue", though problems with uploading to the site remained. On June 30, 2023, Gfycat announced it would discontinue service on September 1, 2023. On September 1, 2023, the website was taken down.
News of the site's impending end was announced on Gfycat's homepage, which was updated on June 30 with a message informing users that "after September 1, 2023, all Gfycat content and data will be deleted," and advising everyone to download anything of importance before then.
The shutdown is a sign that the service has struggled to compete against rivals Tenor and Giphy. Gfycat recently faced criticism after its TLS security certificate temporarily lapsed in May, making the platform inaccessible to most users for five days.
The same reasons why the gif died the first time round hadn't gone away: the technology produces large files with poor image quality. Even as sites such as Twitter and Facebook built in support for posting gifs, they also changed them, turning them into video files to more efficiently display them on mobile devices.
Snapchat and Instagram have temporarily removed their Giphy GIF sticker features after users saw an extremely racist GIF as an option to add to their images. Snapchat confirms to TechCrunch “As soon as we were made aware, we removed the GIF and have disabled Giphy until we can be sure that this won't happen again . . .
After September 1, 2023, all Gfycat content and data will be deleted | Hacker News. https://www.reddit.com/r/gfycat/comments/13lfb1j/psa_gfycat_... provides context and some information on alternate access methods and archival techniques.
RedGifs is a website known for hosting and sharing adult content in the form of animated GIFs and short video clips. It's essentially a platform where users can upload and view explicit material.
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