In lesser-news, Facebook has announced that it’ll be removing video profile images starting February 7 of this year. Though this won’t likely have any major impacts, it will most likely require manual user intervention as those who currently have video profile images will be automatically reverted to the standard ‘still’ pictures come the update.
So, GIFs Then?
A notification posted by user Andrew Curry, shared by your friendly neighborhood Matt Navarra of course, shows that Facebook is giving its video profile images option the boot – that’s right, Facebook is making it known that it’ll be removing the option entirely. This is made more ironic by the fact that Facebook introduced the option to use micro-clips as profile images in hopes that it would be a more fun and engaging way to ‘rejuvenate’ user profiles. Hmm, maybe it was a little too fun for Facebook?
Originally launched in 2015, profile videos allowed users to upload a 7-second video clip that would then automatically loop on repeat, adding an animated engagement element to a user’s Facebook presence. It was mainly using a GIF as a profile image, which is a pretty accurate simplification of the premise behind the push. It hasn’t been a highly used feature, but there were those that were able to create interesting and entertaining profile clips, further adding to their profile’s personality.
Be that as it may, support for the option outweighed user value, with Facebook disallowing people to upload profile videos sometime last year. That was more of an indicator that Facebook might be removing the option sometime later, which now comes to fruition as Facebook is, again, shutting down profile videos. Users who still have their profile videos will need to switch to the static images of old, or, if they’re cool with it, allow Facebook to automatically revert their profile images to their video cover image.
It’s not a major shift, and as we mentioned earlier, we doubt that it’ll have any major or lasting impacts. At most, it’ll be an ant-bite to those who prefer a bit of unorthodoxy when it comes to their profiles and online behavior, but that’s more of a case-to-case basis instead of a system-wide concern.
The Wrap
If we look at it carefully, it might even be classified as a good tradeoff, sacrificing the ability to add a little bit of extra personal flair to our profiles in exchange for resource-focus on other, more pressing fronts. While it was a quirky option that somewhat added extra engagement, it clearly wasn’t performing enough or as significantly as it was meant, prompting a wiser course of action to instead allocate the resources used to maintain the option to other, more tangible initiatives.
You sometimes have to give up a few things to claim others. Most of the time, what you sacrificed to get ends up being way more valuable, so for Facebook, profile videos were at least an insightful experiment. What they gleaned from its operation since 2015 should be useful enough to help them move forward in planning newer, more engaging, and more compulsory features and functions. Either way, if you’re so keen on short clips, there’s always GIPHY.
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