[April Fools] Comments Now Comes with Animated GIF, Powered by GIPHY

Happy April Fools' Day

Alright. It's actually an April Fools' Day prank. See further announcement here. All GIFs will be gone by 5PM.

Updated 5PM: That's all folks!


Feature Announcement

To improve communication between our members and overall website usability, OzBargain has introduced GIPHY integration. Animated GIFs will be automatically added to your comments! Just join the discussions to find out more how it works!

The Story

Communication on the Internet has always been onerous and often we cannot find words to describe how we really feel (like my current experience trying to write up this announcement).

Brain Useless Empty

Sometimes you tried to provide an analysis with every point covered and all the details lined up in orderly fashion — only to have your long essay disregarded by other members, who loudly protested demanding a tl;dr. Incorrectly communicated ideas due to inappropriate choice of words can also cause confusions and perplexities, which sometimes might lead to full on flame wars. Indeed we need a modern tool to help us to express ourselves better online, to improve discussions, to communicate ideas, yada yada. It turns out that the solution has already been invented 20 years ago at the dawn of world wide web — Animated GIFs.

Homer Simpson

They said that a picture is worth a thousand words. An animated GIF with 20 frames must worth at least 50 times that! By adding an animated GIF at the end of your comments it would instantly enrich the ideas you are trying to persuade, which should hopefully resolve all the communication issues we have here.

However, with so many animated GIFs floating on the interweb today, how do we pick the right one to be added to your comments? That’s where GIPHY comes to the picture. They are a startup founded in 2013 and has recently closed a USD $55 million series C funding round. Yes apparently they are the “Google of GIFs” according to this TechCrunch article so they must be good! They provide an API to match up keywords with appropriate animated GIFs, and that is what we use to integrate with OzBargain’s commenting system.

Giphy

Usage

At this stage, an animated GIF will be appended to the bottom of your comment if

  • It’s on 1st or 2nd level of the thread, i.e. replies to OP, or replies to replies to OP.
  • It contains enough keywords to be used to search GIPHY, or contains command /gif <keywords> at the last line of the comment.

Do note that only the first two words will be used to query GIPHY, and in the case where your choice of words becoming too sophisticated, GIPHY might not return any result. Also querying GIPHY is done in a background thread so you will not see your animated GIF straight away. Refreshing the page a few seconds later and it should be there. It's an engineering issue which we will resolve in our next update.

For example by adding /gif scotty at the end of a comment might add this to your comment

Scotty Engineering

Final Remark

Integrating with the comments is just a start. We shall hopefully have animated GIFs populating your deals and your private messages later this month. The age of animated GIFs is indeed upon us (again), so stay tuned! Let me put an "Under Construction" animated GIF here first to indicate that it’s still a work in progress.

Under Construction

Comments

  • +1

    Hey guys! Feel free to start loading our new commenting system.

    /gif load testing

    • This is a win for us all!

      /gif winning

      • 3rd level, won't work

    • +1

      hi

      /gif puppy

    • Is there a rule regarding the loading of gif?
      Commentators need to refrain from loading NSFW gifs…

    • WIll there be a prize for best gif

      /gif trophy

    • awesome!

      /gif awesome

    • +2

      Thanks scotty.
      /gif showry

    • ooo jjerrr

      /gif america (profanity) yeah

      • awwwww :(

        /gif sad face

    • -1

      What's the point of adding [April Fools] tags…

      defeats the purpose of trying to fool ppl

      • +1

        Sorry, you are one day too late to make that comment. To clarify, when this was posted the title started with "[New Feature] …" but was changed to April Fools at 3pm.

        /gif missingout

        • /gif April Fools FOMO

        • -4

          That's okay about being late

          Missed the post when it had the [new feature] tag

          Though how were fooled?

          I think u should think of more elaborate fools or jokes next time
          Since the pattern is u add new feature tag every April fools which don't fool any one.

          Also why not wait till April 2 before reveal the truth?

  • +1

    You'd be a fool not to monetise this. Users could pay per frame to allow their 'nuanced' opinions to gain higher visibility. Sort of like a Page rank or P ranking that Google users to priositise search results.
    /gif Shut up and take my money

    http://hd.wallpaperswide.com/thumbs/shut_up_and_take_my_mone… (just in case the newly developed system has any bugs)

    • Cool

      /gif cool

    • /gif cash back rewards

  • Yay!

    /gif Ice Cream

  • +2

    Awesome! I was just saying the other day how much I miss the golden age of the web aka geocities. With this feature ozbargain will really come alive!

    • +6

      I also love April Fools Day :)

    • +3

      Yes that was the good old days of the Internet, where pages on Geocities would feature no less than 10 animated GIFs.

      • Less than 10 and you were doing it wrong. And I would definitely sign your guestbook to let it be known.

        • +2

          That's cool. Also got a site? Mind join my webring? :)

    • +1

      This is awesome!

      /gif crying

  • +1

    :O

    /gif April Fools

    • This is no April Fools

      /gif for real

  • Love it. Bring on the animation.

    /gif party

  • Mooo.
    /gif cow

  • +8

    This is the best news I've heard all month!!!

    /gif minions excited

  • cant even manage the simplist of tasks.

    /gif grumpy

  • +1

    Bah, I forgot what bloody day it was for a while there…you got me! ;)

  • trying again..

    /gif second try

  • -1

    I almost don't want this feature removed

    /gif Jif Gif

  • /gif at least you tried

  • /gif kanye

  • /gif kayne east

  • Let the magic begin!!

  • /gif kanye tool

  • am i the only one who wants to try some not so PG keywords.

    • +1

      Unfortunately we have set the rating filter on our API calls to GIPHY to PG.

    • Well that's crap

      /gif crap

  • This is gold

  • +1

    any chance of limiting the size of the gifs? lolll i can see this getting out of hand in some of the deals with a busy comments section… lol

  • Loving the under construction sign. This probably won't work for me but it's worth giving it a shot.

    /gif clear

    • That's actually horrible. Don't use /gif clear guys.

  • /gif 2girls

  • april fools? :P

  • +20

    /gif sausage girl

    • +3

      /gif damn

    • /gif oh hell no

    • /gif spicy meat

  • +3

    /gif bangbus

  • /gif homer simpson

  • /gif deal

  • +7

    Before tightarse gets here I'm going to take the opportunity. Time to test the filter of arse and ass.

    /gif tight ass

    • +2

      That's definitely a new definition on what a tight arse is.

  • Hmm.

    /gif no pants today

  • /gif jv

  • /gif we got a badass here

  • /gif goatse

  • +6

    /gif spiderman

  • /gif thanks

  • /gif safety dance

  • .

    /gif safety dance

  • /gif happy parks and recreation

  • +1

    /gif broden

  • +1

    Outstanding, almost essential feature. Hope it lasts more than a day.

    /gif astley

  • /gif harvey moron

  • +2

    This is just too cool

    /gif cool

  • Best feature ever!

    /gif yay

    • I remember acting about the same way the first time I got my first puck. Actually, I was a bit older than this kid

      /gif late bloomer

  • /gif ozbargain

  • +1

    As a matter of course, after you score a bargain

    /gif winning http://i.giphy.com/mp1JYId8n0t3y.gif

  • +1

    Omg reminds me of 1990s chat sites. Asl?

  • +1

    someone had to do it

    /gif trump

    • /gif bernie

      • +1

        /gif hillary —- didn't work.

        I should try

        /gif DNA black dress

        or I could read the instructions. wont work this far down a comment thread

  • i feel like i need this in my life, until now i knew something was missing but couldn't quite put my finger on it.

    /gif complete me

  • /gif shameless

  • so much awesome. doesn't show up in the preview?

    /gif awesome

    • not what i was expecting…

      /gif wtf

    • +2

      Since querying the GIPHY API server takes sometime so it's done in an asynchronised queue to allow front-end PHP processes to execute quickly, if that makes sense at all. So yeah, sorry not available in previews.

      • -1

        i tried to google translate that, but there's no option to translate from nerd =P

        /gif nerd

    • Alright… with this I'm a fan of this services…

      /gif yes!

  • /gif cunning linguist

  • I wonder if there is any way of gaming this system

    /gif jim shivers

    • apparently not

      /gif i guess billy joel

      • +1

        wow. what a perfect system.

        /gif bugs starship troopers

        • hahaha those turned out completely unrelated. btw it only works up to the 1st & 2nd level of comments.

  • We've entered an golden age in internet commenting & it's great to see OzBargain at the forefront of it

    /gif excited

  • /gif kappa

  • /gif nyancat

    • /gif cute

  • /gif deadpool

    • /gif negasonic-teenage-warhead

Login or Join to leave a comment