Imgur, one of the biggest image sharing sites on the Internet (in no small part thanks to reddit), announced a new format for looping GIF videos – GIFV.

The company says it is reimagining the looping GIF video thanks to the significance it has to Internet culture. It shows a 50MB GIF, which it converted to 3.4MB file in the new format, which enables it to still look great and load quickly.

Imgur says in a blog post, “The cornerstone of Project GIFV is a platform-wide upgrade to automatically convert uploaded GIF files on the fly into the MP4 video format. The converted MP4s are significantly smaller than their equivalent GIFs, which allows them to load at lightning-fast speeds with better quality. By lowering bandwidth consumption, the change also optimizes Imgur for users on mobile. Rejoice!”

“Beyond performance increases, the core experience will not change: Project GIFV implements MP4 video in a way that looks and behaves exactly like a GIF,” the company adds.

Project GIFV is introducing “massively” improved upload limits on Imgur itself, and the uploads will now fully animate on Twitter and Facebook.

Imgur will also now denote converted MP4s with a .gifv file extension. More on the project here.

Earlier this year, Imgur secured a $40 million round of funding including a contribution from reddit, which just secured its own $50 million round recently.

Imgur told us at the time it would use the funding to accelerate internal growth, drive continued product development and innovation, and grow its community.

Image via Imgur