Three years and 300 million people: The growth of GIFs on iOS
As we approach the launch of iOS 11, we thought it would be fun to take a look back at the last three years since GIFs made a splash on iOS. Plus, there are a few new things in store for Tenor’s Messages app. Read on for more…
When GIF Keyboard first launched for iPhone (and iPad) users in 2014, emoji were the primary way to visually share how you were feeling via text. Today, Tenor helps 300 million people say the perfect thing through GIFs, and GIF Keyboard is the #1 downloaded & used GIF-sharing app on iOS. In Apple’s one-year-old Messages App Store, GIF Keyboard is the #2 free app overall.
Beyond this, GIFs have become an irreplaceable part of our conversations in messaging apps. Recent research shows 77% of people who communicate through images within messaging apps prefer GIFs over emoji, stickers and words, and the majority of 18–44 year olds expect to use more GIFs in the coming year.
Everyone’s Favorite GIFs
To give you a sense for how people use GIFs on iOS, we’ve pulled the top GIFs each year since GIF Keyboard launched. Do these echo your general feelings about the last three years?
The vast majority of GIFs shared are done so to communicate a specific emotion — more than 90%, to be exact. Here are the top emotion-related terms searched for on Tenor by iOS users over the past three years.
New Features
In time for the launch of iOS 11, we’ve also overhauled Tenor’s GIF Keyboard Messages app for iOS 11. Specific improvements include:
- GIF Keyboard is much faster, more reliable, and now supports HD GIFs
- GIF captioning is now available in the Tenor Messages app, along with easier favoriting and sticker creation
- You can now access your profile more quickly, along with uploads, and favorites within the Tenor Messages app
- GIF search has been improved, making finding the perfect GIF even easier
Finally, in iOS 11, Tenor is always one tap away at the bottom of every Messages conversation. You can drag the blue Tenor “GIF” icon to the left side of the Messages tray so it’s always available.
300 million people each month use Tenor to add tone to their mobile messaging conversations by adding GIFs that visually communicate their thoughts and feelings — better than words ever could. We process 300 million mobile search requests daily and have used this data to build the Tenor Emotional Graph, which powers our GIF Keyboard app and GIF sharing for partners including Apple iMessage, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter, Google Gboard, Kik, LinkedIn, TouchPal and others. Learn more about becoming a Tenor GIF API partner here.
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