Gfycat , the well-known GIF hosting platform , has announced that it will be shutting down soon , specifically on September 1. This means that the entire archive of GIFs and memes will disappear in less than two months.
“The Gfycat service is being discontinued,” a notice at the top of the site reads. “Please save or delete your Gfycat content by going to https://www.gfycat.com. Log in to account . After September 1, 2023, all content and data will be deleted from gfycat.com.”
See also: Instagram starts supporting GIFs in comments
Gfycat was founded in Canada in 2013 and was among the first online services to offer video encoding GIFs. In the United States, it launched in 2015.
Gfycat offered a platform for uploading and hosting short video content, as well as an iMessage, an Android , and the GIF Brewery macOS app for creating GIFs and videos.
See also: How to convert a video to GIF on iPhone, iPad
The news of Gfycat’s shutdown probably comes as no surprise to most users. Back in May, Motherboard reported that Snap, the parent company of Gfycat, had allowed certificates to expire security. The site was down for five days when the certificates expired. This clearly shows that no one was looking after the platform. However, even before this downtime, there were questions about whether anyone was still working on the service. In recent months, there have been reports on Reddit of GIF upload failures, extended downtime, and a lack of response from the support team.
See also: Create GIFs from anything on a Samsung Galaxy phone
The closure of Gfycat is a reminder that even the most popular online platforms can eventually close. Make sure to save content if you don't want to lose it!
