Gfycat.com shuts down on September 1 and all Gifs will be taken down
Popular animated gifs hosting service gfycat.com is shutting down on September 1, 2023 and all hosted content will no longer be accessible at that point.
The service is one of many that is used by Internet users to upload and share animated gifs on the Internet. Founded more than eight years ago, Gfycat has risen to popularity and is widely used in some Internet communities.
The official website of the service informs users about the shutdown. There, the company writes: "The Gfycat service is being discontinued. Please save or delete your Gfycat content by visiting https://www.gfycat.com and logging in to your account. After September 1, 2023, all Gfycat content and data will be deleted from gfycat.com"
Existing users have time until September 1, 2023 to save their uploaded animated gifs for safekeeping. On September 2, 2023, all data will be deleted from the company's servers and will no longer be accessible.
Any image embedded on third-party sites will no longer display either and show an error instead. Uploaders may download their animated gifs from the service and upload it to another, and then change the embed codes of their posts to keep the images visible.
Gyfcat banned adult content in 2019 in the app and created a new service, called redgifs, for that. This service was later sold to another company.
The service was acquired last year by Snap, makers of Snapchat. Gfycat is not the only animated gif service that has been acquired recently. Meta, owner of Facebook, tried to acquire the popular service Giphy but was blocked to go forward by regulators. Meta had to sell Giphy at a $260 million loss to Shutterstock as a consequence.
Snap has not made an official announcement regarding the shutdown of Gfycat.
Here are some Gfycat alternatives
- Giphy -- While now part of Shutterstock, Giphy remains available at the moment on the Internet.
- Imgur -- One of the oldest standing sites that allows users to upload animated gifs and images.
- Kikliko -- Animated Gifs with sounds support is what sets this site apart from many others.
- Tenor -- Another site that allows users to upload animated gifs and embed them into third-party sites.
Now You: do you use another site for hosting animated gifs?
Why do companies buy websites and then shut them down?
I dont think I ever used gfycat. redgifs I heard of though.
reaction gifs need to disappear… one of the worst things about internet browsing and modern social media. I use settings/extensions which hide that distracting crud.
Glad you hate them, we’ll use more!
The lack of comments probably means that gfycat is not as popular as it once was. I think the most common content was moved to redgifs.
At least the own company said that all the content will be deleted and no longer accessible. I wonder if other companies such TikTok, Youtube, Facebook and so many others would delete all its content in the rare event of bankruptcy (it’s a miracle that many of them are still standing with all the scandals, fraud, conspiracy and data treatment with a lot of privacy issues so forth).
By the way, today my family and me are going to our holidays to Portugal, after being cancelled our trip to France due the severe and dangerous racial riots on several important cities including Paris. Such an entire disgrace itself, France was a promising paradise even in later 90’s when my grandfather take us each summer to his house at Le Barcarès. Nowadays it’s becoming a very unsecure country, however I hope than the french citizens will solve their problems soon.
See you all again at monday 17h July! :]
@John G.
‘racial riots’ lol. That is a stupid mentality if you think it that way. By the way weren’t those people celebrated as French when they won the world cup?
Anyway enjoy your holidays in Portugal.