And Now...An Award Show For the Best Animated GIF

This is rather amusing. The .GIFYS, the first annual awards show celebrating the animated file format has opened online voting today as they work towards determining the all-time best GIFs. The nominees are the selections of a panel made up of people from Buzzfeed, Gawker, Tumblr, Mashable, Joystiq, The Daily Dot, Engadget and others who have pulled from their own archives, reached out to their hundreds of thousands of twitter followers and scoured the Internet to curate the best of the best animated GIFs.

The mission of The .GIFYS, which was created by a team of creatives and developers at CP+B LA, is to immortalize the best GIFs, a medium that otherwise is generally viewed only once before it's lost in the abyss that is the internet. At www.thegifys.com, everyone can vote on their favorite in each category, ranging from Cats to Art + Design, to WTF?!

Of the show, .GIFY Co-Founder William Sawyer said, "The GIF is now 26 years old, and there are millions of them online. It's time they received their due respect with a proper awards show. We recruited some of the top names in internet culture to curate the best, and we're looking to the whole internet to decide the winners."

The .GIFYS panelists include:

- Chelsea Marshall - Editor, Buzzfeed Animals
- Fernando Alfonso - Writer, Lead Illustrator And Comics Editor, The Daily Dot
- Paul Budnitz - Kidrobot Founder, Artist, Filmmaker & Serial Entrepreneur
- Christine Erickson - List Editor, Mashable
- Ann Friedman - Columnist For New York Magazine And Gif Enthusiast
- Cord Jefferson - West Coast Editor, Gawker
- Amber Gordon - Creative Strategist, Tumblr
- Dianna Mcdougall - Live Giffer, Shorty Awards Finalist, Community Manager, Dots
- Lil Bubs + Mike Bridavsky - Internet Cat And Her Human
- Rachel Binx + Sha Hwang - Founders, Gifpop
- Ivan Perez-Armendariz - Chief Digital Officer, CP+B
- Dan Milano - Gif Maker, Partnership Manager, Dailymotion USA
- Jess Conditt - Senior Editor, Joystiq
- Ryan Block - Head of Product, Engadget / Co-Founder, gdgt
- Brian Morrissey - Editor-in-Chief, Digiday

And we are told because of the complicated nature of who "owns" a particular GIF, the award show will not be awarding the content creator, but rather the GIF itself. Voting lasts a week, with winners announced online later in the month. For updates on The .GIFYS, follow their twitter @thegifys or visit thegifys.com.