JibJab Jumps Into Selfie Gifs With New Messaging App

Many hours have been spent on JibJab creating wacky e-cards for my friends and family throughout the years. I’ve “elfed myself,” sent my dad a pic of his face on every member of a five member mariachi band for his birthday and made many other laughable moments with this site. The company is stepping into the mobile realm today with a new messaging app for creating selfie gifs.

“JibJab is in a state of constant evolution,” said one half of the JibJab duo Gregg Spiridellis. “Today, messengers are king and we intend to bring pioneering, premium content and tools to that channel the same as we have done in the past.”

Brothers Evan and Gregg Spiridellis hit viral fame in 2004 with their video of George W. Bush and John Kerry singing “This Land is Your Land.” They started out with political satire videos in 1999, then shifted to annual year-in review videos, moved on to e-cards and are now venturing into mobile gifs. JibJab has kept its signature dancing heads theme throughout the 15 years in the business.

JibJab purchased Make Believe Labs and its adorable children’s video calling service “Hello Santa” just weeks ago. This was the first major purchase in JibJab history.

The new app, JibJab Messages, allows you to use the same method of pasting a picture of your head (or someone else’s, hint, hint) onto a moving character, it’s just in gif form for iPhone now. You login using Facebook, Twitter or G+ and then start creating your profile gif right away with the “Gifs Starring You” section. It works in a very similar manner to the way you’d create an e-card on the site. You simply snap a selfie right from the app or select a photo from your camera roll and then choose which background theme tickles your fancy. Feel like it’s a Nyan Cat with your face on it kind of day? There’s a gif for that. Need to send your friend a gif of them dancing as Napoleon Dynamite? There’s a gif for that, too. You can then choose to send it via text, Twitter, Facebook, email or by copying and sending the link.

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Naturally, I jumped right into it and terrified all my friends with a text of this lovely creation:

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Friends texted back anything from “The hell?” to “OMG that is awesome.” The app only allows 10 free messages before you hit your limit (which I hit a little too quickly). It’s 99 cents a month for unlimited or 99 cents for your next 10 sends.

Gregg sent this original of him as a dancing Hugh Grant to my inbox as well:

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