Gfycat, the popular GIF-hosting platform owned by Snap, has announced its shutdown which will be on September 1st, leading to the removal of its GIF archive from the internet.
Users have been given a two-month window to save their content before it is permanently removed from the platform.
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A message displayed on the website reads, “The Gfycat service will be discontinued. Please ensure that you save or delete your contents by visiting the page and logging into your account. All Gfycat content and data will be deleted from the platform after September 1, 2023.”
Snap has not clarified whether it intends to incorporate Gfycat content into Snapchat or if it plans to delete the years’ worth of GIFs entirely.
Nevertheless, a spokesperson from Snapchat informed SurgeZirc SA that “Snapchatters will still be able to search for and use GIFs in their conversations with friends.”
The decision to shut down Gfycat underscores the platform’s struggle to compete with rivals like Tenor and Giphy.
Gfycat faced recent criticism after its TLS security certificate temporarily expired in May, rendering the platform inaccessible to most users for five days.
Moreover, Reddit posts indicate that some Gfycat users have been unable to upload GIFs for several months, with an unresponsive support team exacerbating their frustration.
The service’s closure will disappoint many users who appreciated its support for high-definition short clips and animations.
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Founded in 2013, Gfycat was among the pioneers in offering video encoding of GIFs. Snap acquired the service in 2020.
This announcement follows Meta’s sale of Giphy to Shutterstock for $53 million, marking the end of Meta’s ownership of the GIF search engine, which it had acquired three years prior for $400 million.
