After months of speculation about its future, GIF hosting platform Gfycat is being put down by its parent Snap.
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.
Not much else was shared by Gfycat nor Snapchat owner Snap to El Reg.
Snap has reportedly confirmed it's winding Gfycat down, but not much else. Whether it plans to integrate Gfycat content into Snapchat or make its years of GIFs accessible in some other way is unknown.
It's also not clear what will happen to the likely millions of links on third party sites to Gfycat content; Without word from Snap or Gfycat itself (The Register attempted to reach out to both) it's safe to assume that there will be a lot of broken site images come September.
Gfycat, which has drawn enthusiasm from users since its launch in 2013 by allowing video encoding of GIFs and high-definition content, has been in poor health for some time, making its demise not all that surprising.
In May, Gfycat's TLS certificate expired, making it inaccessible to users. Snap said the issue was "temporary," and it was fixed as of May 22, having gone offline on May 17. That coma wasn't the only recent problem, though.
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Despite a number of mobile and desktop apps and integrations with platforms like Reddit, Skype and WordPress, users of Gfycat had been reporting instability on the platform, with uploads regularly failing and no response from customer support representatives despite repeat inquiries. Reaching out to the Gfycat team about DMCA-related inquiries, according to one Reddit user, was even met with silence despite the legal importance of such requests.
Why Snap has allowed this to happen may have to do with the company's recent losses, which continue to compile.
Snap axed twenty percent of its staff amidst wider industry layoffs last year, along with killing several projects like games, original shows, and a selfie drone. The company's losses have continued into this year, with Snap reporting less revenue, DAUs and revenue per user than expected as of Q1 report in April. Putting it down at this point might be a mercy, though it could be argued at least one company might be interested in buying it rather than erasing it from the face of the web.
Facebook parent company Meta tried, but ultimately failed, to acquire Gfycat rival Giphy for $400m (£315m) last year when its purchase of the site was blocked by the UK Competition and Markets Authority.
Meta was forced to sell the platform to Shutterstock for a mere $53 million (£41.7 million) – an 87 percent loss. If Zuckerberg still wants his own GIF platform, he may want to ring up Snap CEO Evan Spiegel before the servers get wiped. ®
