I think one of the reasons is that iOS devices and some android ones don’t support autoplay (presumably to prevent battery drain). iPhones with iOS 7 will play

I think one of the reasons is that iOS devices and some android ones don’t support autoplay (presumably to prevent battery drain). iPhones with iOS 7 will play videos only in full screen, hiding the rest of the website. There are services which convert gifs to videos to use the much more efficient encoding: http://gfycat.com/about http://gfycat.com/about. So we’ve come full circle once again.