May X be seeking to deliver again GIF profile pictures within the app?
Twitter, now X, did as soon as provide this as an choice (kind of), and a few customers do nonetheless have transferring profile pictures because of this. However the capability to truly add a GIF as your X avatar has been unavailable, in any type, for greater than a decade.
However that could possibly be about to alter.
Based on a brand new put up from X engineer Andrea Conway, the X workforce is no less than discussing the choice of bringing again animated profile pictures.
gif profile pics (they’d be optionally available obvs)
— Andrea Conway (@ehikian) November 1, 2023
It’s solely a ballot for now, however Conway has shared numerous insights on coming X options over the past 12 months, and all of them have ended up being rolled out at some stage. So it does appear seemingly that that is on the product workforce’s radar, although some customers are fairly against the choice.
To make clear, X/Twitter has by no means formally enabled customers to add GIFs for his or her profile picture, however there was, at one stage, a workaround that enabled customers to add a GIF inside sure dimensions that will then work as an animated avatar in-stream.
Former Twitter chief Dick Costolo apparently oversaw the closure of this loophole again in 2012, making it unattainable to add GIFs, however customers that had already carried out so had been in a position to hold them. Which is why, now and again, you come throughout an animated profile picture, despite the fact that you’ll be able to’t really add one your self.
Some customers declare that it’s too distracting, whereas it could additionally pose issues for display screen readers and different accessibility instruments. However there could possibly be a variation of this the place customers can add an animation to their profile picture, when a customer hovers over the image perhaps, or faucets by to their profile particularly.
Or it might go full LinkedIn, and add video intros on profiles (which LinkedIn eliminated as an choice earlier this 12 months)
I imply, Elon is eager to tackle LinkedIn within the job stakes, so perhaps?
It looks as if a minor consideration, but it surely might have an effect, and it could possibly be coming someday quickly.
Additionally value noting, app researcher Jane Manchun Wong famous that X was working on re-adding GIFs as a profile image option in December last year. So it has been no less than into account for a while.
