Twitter makes it easier to annoy your followers with GIFs

GIFs are, sadly, here to stay. We've come a (relatively) long way since the days of animated GIF adverts that adorned countless web pages through the 90s, but the animated image format is still highly divisive -- and I'm not just talking about whether it is pronounced with a hard or soft G sound.

Some people loathe GIFs with a passion that knows no bounds, while for others they are the perfect means of communication. If you fall into the latter camp, Twitter has some good news for you -- a 'GIF search' button is making its way to the web, as well as the iOS and Android apps.

The button will be making an appearance "over the coming weeks", and will provide Twitter users with an easy way to track down the perfect cat GIF to accompany their tweets. Powering the service are Giphy and Riffsy, and it will be possible to use the search feature to add GIFs to public tweets as well as private, direct message.

Twitter has already learned that animated content is very popular, and this led to the decision to make GIFs and video autoplay in timelines. The addition of a GIF search feature is a continuation of this idea. If you hate GIFs, now might be the time to disable the autoplay option lest you become overwhelmed with pithy animated memes.

Photo credit: Quka / Shutterstock