Instagram is rolling out a new feature that allows users search and add GIF stickers to their Instagram Stories. Instagram users will now be able to slap animated stickers on their photographs to turn them into GIF images. This has been made possible with the integration of Giphy on the photo-sharing platform. Besides, Instagram will now allow uploading of every image and video in any size to Stories, bypassing the earlier limitation of cropping them in a 9:16 aspect ratio. The GIF stickers feature is available as part of Instagram v29 on both iOS and Android platforms.
With the Instagram v29, users will be able to customise their Instagram Stories with a huge collection of stickers that come with movements. There are dancing animals, weirdly-rotating body parts, winking eyes, and hovering burgers among others to add to your Instagram Stories now from the Giphy library. “From bouncing letters and twirling hearts to dancing cats and pizza in space, these animated stickers help you make any photo or video funny, interesting or creative,” the Facebook-owned company added.
In addition to this, Instagram will now allow users to upload photos and videos of any size to their Story, which will come as a relief to the users who weren’t very fond of the portrait format. Instagram says that the extra space around the images will now be filled with a custom colour gradient that matches the image. However, this feature is not available and will be rolled out to the users in “coming weeks”.
With this move, Facebook-owned photo-sharing app has once again aped Snapchat to roll out more similar features. While Facebook has been denying that it has copied the features, it has justified the move by saying that these features are inspired by Snapchat, and are needed by the users. Similarly, Facebook’s other apps such as WhatsApp and Messenger have also got the same features as Instagram, which is originally copied from Snapchat.
