Yesterday Twitter expanded its size restriction on animated GIFs from 5MB to 15MB, and immediately users exploited their newfound power. Larger GIFs. Longer GIFs. Higher-resolution GIFs. What impressed us most were the folks who fit complete music videos, television shows, and movies into a single tweet.
Below, we’ve included embeds for The Matrix, episodes of Seinfeld and an anime called Aiura, and the music video for Rob Thomas and Santana’s '90’s summer jam "Smooth." Each tweet makes sacrifices to push the 15MB limit to the brink. Seinfeld is in low-res black and white. The Matrix sprints at fast-forward speeds. "Smooth" ditches 15 of every 16 frames, making it look not so smooth.
The intention of these tweets wasn’t to upload perfect replications — which would just be a boring act of piracy. These creators instead wanted to communicate what can be accomplished with a seemingly small improvement. An upgrade from 5MB to 15MB sounds like bland jargon; but when you tell someone you can crunch one of the greatest sci-fi films into a single tweet, the mind wonders what else can be done.
Update: A number of GIFs containing entire movies have appeared on Reddit's FullMovieGIFs for the past couple years. If you like these tweets, be sure to check out the subreddit.
The Matrix:
Twitter increased gif upload limit. Now I can finally share the entire Matrix movie in a tweet! (cc @KingJames) pic.twitter.com/xpxNvm835b
— Ian Chan (@chanian) July 12, 2016
Seinfeld:
since twitter increased the gif size limit i can finally share this gif of an entire seinfeld episode with you all pic.twitter.com/itI2YsD8sD
— dicks out for gaston (@godspeeing) July 12, 2016
Aiura:
Oh bigger gifs?
— #1 Giggle Bitch (@Aranchine) July 12, 2016
time to post entire Aiura eps then pic.twitter.com/1GgS5yK6pb
if you resize it small enough and limit every 16 frames, you can fit the entire music video for "smooth" on twitter pic.twitter.com/rh7yfDEMXF
— Mark (@tole_cover) July 11, 2016