World Cup: The best GIFs so far

daniele.santoro

GIFs have been commonplace in expressing our shock, horror or joy at events in emails, Tumblr posts or blog entries for years. And yesterday, Twitter finally announced that GIFs can be embedded in Tweets as well.

Stats show that Twitter users love visual content, with photos delivering on average 35% more retweets – and this extra dimension will help take it to the next level.

Twitter’s 3MB upload limit will certainly attract GIF creators, as this upload limit is larger than Tumblr’s newly bumped up GIF size allowance of 1.75MB.

Currently on Twitter, Vine is the primary tool to aid story telling or to share moments with wider communities, however, the addition of GIFs to Twitter’s armory could see this change.

We’ve seen just how popular GIFs have become during this year’s World Cup. They have become a cornerstone of online conversation as people join in and share moments that they did not have capacity to at previous tournaments.

Some the most shared GIFs are not always of the games in play. We have seen so many fantastic goals that have been shared across the web but it’s often the moments outside of the 90 minutes that make the best content – as we’ll prove here, with our selection of favorite GIFs from the World Cup so far.

The awkward handshake 
A fourth official styles out an awkward handshake prior to the Chile v Spain match.

FrightenedGloriousGermanwirehairedpointer

The overzealous fan 
A fan in the crowd says goodbye to Spain after they are knocked out of the tournament.

HardtofindSpiffyBrahmanbull

That Celebration
It’s not quite Roger Milla, but the Colombian team celebrate their first goal of this World Cup in style.

ElderlyDiligentAndeancondor

The “Get back in your (Technical) Box”
The Chilean manager trying to communicate with his players during the game through the medium of ‘death stare’.

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