It's shaping up to be another big year for the animated GIF.
It's only the middle of January, and already Newsweek, which is switching from print to the Internet, is introducing its first digital edition with an animated cover, a moving, four-second look at a submarine's descent. Also this week, Cinemax premiered its new TV show, Banshee, as an animated GIF over at BuzzFeed. The Banshee animation told the hour-long episode in 80 animated GIFs in advance of the debut on TV.
Animated GIFs are inspiring other artists to experiment with blending street and Internet art. Designer INSA is getting attention for a hybrid form he calls "GIFiti" that blends physical-world art with animations online, as explained by this interesting story in The Atlantic.
Meantime, millions of people are using mobile GIF tools to create their own animations and share them on social networks. Here's a list of popular apps for generating animated GIFs on cell phones, along with a list of resources for finding free GIFs online: