The gifs that keep on giving

The new series of the X-Files was "live giffed"

When promoting last month's long-awaited comeback of The X-Files, the show's creator - Fox - sought Giphy's help.

Fox wanted the company to chop the new episode up into little pieces and make a series of animated gifs - those blinking, forever-looping, silent clips millions share every day.

When the show aired, Giphy was able to "live gif" the broadcast on social media. Fans lapped it up, sharing the new gifs thousands of times.

"They're able to speak in that show's voice," said Julie Logan, Giphy's director of brand strategy.

Giphy is a search engine for animated gifs. You describe the gif you want, and it'll load it up ready for sharing.

The three-year-old firm is valued at $300m (£210m), thanks to a recent $55m investment round. Huge money, you might think, for a format that is among the most primitive the web has to offer.

But really, that's the point.

A fixture of 90s internet, the animated gif was, for a while, the only way to give a webpage some sign of life. It's not a video, rather a series of lots of images played in sequence, like a flipbook.

Once newer technologies like Flash came along, gifs fell out of favour and instead became associated with cheap, tacky web design.

Punchline

But the humble gif has made a comeback as the good-guy of the internet.

Gifs don't force a pre-roll advertisement on you before you can watch it. It won't rudely start playing audio when you don't want it to, nor will it plant a tracking cookie on your machine so companies can flog ads at you. And so, as user experiences go, the gif deserves to be treasured.

Companies will eventually be able to pay for their gifs to appear high up in search results

"It's a really powerful medium," says Ms Logan. "It's had a rebirth as a more creative medium. It's a new kind of art.

"It's short. It's like the punchline of a joke. Or just a little smile - that little kick of emotion."

Those little jokes are often made using images from popular culture - movies, TV stars, musicians. Expressive faces made by Taylor Swift, or classic lines from the film Mean Girls.

The fun derived is the online equivalent of quoting a movie out loud when with friends. The enjoyment comes not just from the humour of the line, but that bond of being among people who enjoy the same things you do.

Giphy's search engine is powerful, quick and an adventure into the perky side of the internet.

But right now, and you probably saw this coming, it's not making any money. As many start-up types say to help themselves sleep at night, Giphy is "pre-revenue".

Connect the dots

But investors must see something - a way to spin money out of a format which is popular partly because nobody yet has.

"People have been sharing gifs for a long time," says Ms Logan. "It was something the content creators were not always involved in.

"What we're trying to do is connect those dots."

Julie Logan sees gifs as a form of art

When people use Giphy, not only do they find gifs, but they also get directed to where the gif originated - be it a movie, YouTube clip or otherwise.

For the people who create those products - like the makers of the X-Files - Giphy wants them to see gifs as an opportunity to push what they call "branded language". You're talking to friends, but through the medium of your favourite film stars. By getting involved, studios can have at least some control over quality and distribution.

And it isn't just Fox. HBO, record label Interscope and several others have come to Giphy to help.

"When Game of Thrones puts out these trailers, they want their fans to talk about it," explains Ms Logan.

"A lot of those conversations are happening in gifs."

As to how they'll make money, Ms Logan says we should look at how Google profits from its search.

So - companies will eventually be able to pay Giphy for their gifs to appear higher up in search results, on the understanding they're likely to be used more often. And in future, tie-ups with TV and movie studios may be another considerable stream of income for the firm.

What won't change, however, is the gif itself - you won't be seeing ads slapped all over them. It would go against everything that has made them popular again.

Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC and on Facebook