Guggy wants to help developers add more GIFs to their apps

I love messaging apps. Fortunately, there are a ton of them for me to choose from. Whether it’s Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, iMessage, WeChat, Line, Viber, or any of the other apps available, there is now a seemingly endless list of apps I can use to send a message to the people I care about.

Of course, the makers of each of these apps could probably present a long list of what makes them unique and why I should choose to use one over another. Yet, I have to admit that with the sheer number of messaging apps available, all of the different features they have start to blur together and seem awfully similar.

Of course one way to make messengers a bit more fun and interesting is by adding a little bit of GIFification. Throwing in fun and hilarious GIFs into the mix can breathe new life into a straightforward app. That’s probably why apps like Slack have made such a big deal out of integrations that allow services such as Giphy to bring its library of GIFs into the app.

That’s all well and good, but if you’ve ever used some of the existing GIF services, you’ve probably run into the problem where you want to add a GIF that communicates a specific idea, but end up sending something that makes no sense whatsoever.

That’s exactly the problem a new GIF provider is trying to fix. Guggy is a new GIF service that takes a pretty unique approach to solving the problem of finding a relevant GIF. With Guggy, you can type whatever you’re trying to say, and you’ll get a GIF that is relevant to that message and also features the text you were looking for added to the GIF. With more context the GIF just feels more relevant. For example, if you type “I love pizza,” you would get:

Guggy explains that is able to produce these results through some powerful technology. The service uses Natural Language Processing to find relevant GIFs, and then uses what the company calls a “super fast rendering engine” to add the text in just a second. The combined effect is that the GIFs you find with Guggy feel like they belong in your conversation. You don’t have to struggle or twist your words to find a GIF that makes sense.

So what does this mean for developers? Guggy has made its technology available as an API, so any developer can add Guggy right into their app. This means that potentially, all of those messaging apps we know could take their GIF game to the next level. It gives developers an easy way to add significant new functionality into their apps and, hopefully, help them stand out from the crowd.

Of course, if you want to try Guggy right now, it’s also available via multiple platforms and integrations including, iOS, Android, Chrome, iMessage, Slack, and others.

Guggy is competing in a difficult space. There are lots of options available right now to find GIFs, and messaging apps are building GIF integrations on their own as well. But Guggy is bringing some pretty unique functionality to the table. If the company is able to make waves with developers it might take a leading role in the the GIF tech space.