Animated GIFs have become so huge. They're everywhere. But why? On the surface, they're pretty silly—a few frames of video, endlessly looping in time. There are GIFs of Star Trek's Picard facepalming, ...

The emergence of the animated GIF over the last few years has made short visual loops a regular part of our media diet, but the phenomenon is not an entirely new one. As Chris Baraniuk points out in ...

Inspired by looping videos like GIFs and Vines that have kept millions of Web and mobile users entertained for countless hours, a startup called Coub is adding an extra layer of creativity to the mix.