Instagram is constantly including new functions in its social network, being aware of the great potential of a platform that has already been able to recruit millions of users around the world, largely due to its simplicity of use and also due to the great possibilities that offers for all types of users and brands.
One of the novelties that came to the platform in 2018, which is about to come to an end, were GIFs, those animated images that users like so much to show different thoughts or feelings. Instagram currently allows you to add these GIFs both to stories and to use them in your instant messaging service integrated into the application itself.
In this article we are going to explain how you can use it in both cases, so if you still don't know how to do it, we encourage you to keep reading:
How to send GIFs as a direct message on Instagram
The main function of these GIFs or animated images is that you can now send them by direct message to your friends and other users, doing it in an identical way to how you do it in other messaging applications such as Telegram or WhatsApp, being a very simple process to carry out , since you just have to follow these steps:
- First, enter the chat of the person you want to send a GIF to.
- In the text box in which you write any message you want to send, you must click on the icon (+) that appears on the right side. By clicking on this icon a series of additional options are displayed, among which is the possibility of sending a GIF image. To do this, you just have to click on the square icon with the word GIF inside.
- Once the previous button is pressed, the GIF search engine will automatically open, which will allow us to search for different terms and words to find those GIFs that we want to send to the person with whom we are talking.
As you can see, know how to send GIFs as direct message on Instagram It is very simple since it is a very simple option to use, so you no longer have excuses not to send your favorite GIFs or the one that you see appropriate for each occasion to your friends.
How to add GIFs to Instagram stories
Beyond being able to use GIFs to send them to whoever you want through the Instagram instant messaging service, these animated images can be used in your stories, thus giving them a different touch and to your liking, since you can add as many as you want. In fact, GIFs can be a perfect complement to your photos and videos in Stories.
To do this, you just have to follow these steps that we indicate below:
- First, go to your profile and perform the normal steps to make a story, capturing a new video or photograph or choosing content that you already have on your mobile devices.
- Once the photo or video has been captured or one from your gallery has been chosen, it is time to place your GIFs, for which you have to click on the sticker icon to get to the section of «Stickers«, Where you will have to click on the sticker GIF.
- After clicking on GIF, the GIPHY search engine will appear so that we can select those that we like the most and want to include in our publication.
Keep in mind that there are GIFs of practically anything and on any theme you can imagine, so you can develop and let your imagination run wild to find the GIFs that you like the most to place in all your stories.
GIFs are images that are widely used in social networks and in the internet world in general for a long time, images that allow us to give a different touch to our stories, being very useful since they can be used in very different contexts . The only limit to its use is the imagination of each user, who can choose those that best fit their publication.
Instagram listened to the requests of many of its users and therefore the function of incorporating GIFs to their stories was one of the first stickers to be available to all users of the well-known social network, with millions of people who use them daily to illustrate and accompany their publications, but not only those that are in text or photo format, but also those in which they decide to share a video with all their followers through Stories, the most used function today by the vast majority of the platform's users.
Later came the possibility of sending Stickers to users through the Instagram messaging service, in which the social network is working to provide it with new and better functions, without ruling out that, throughout the new year 2019, it can become "separated" from Instagram, and "Instagram Direct" must be downloaded as an additional application, as is the case with Facebook and its messaging service Facebook Messenger. In fact, it is very likely that this will happen in the next few months, taking into account that in some countries it already works this way and that Instagram belongs to Facebook, which means that the vast majority of functions are being replicated on both platforms since the Image social network was acquired by Mark Zuckerberg's company, thus, currently, there are a lot of similarities between some of the functions that are available and active on this platform, although they may have different names, such as the case, for example, of Instagram stories, which were replicated on Facebook, where they are called "States" instead of Stories, but which have the same objective as the latter, with similar characteristics.