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The GIF is one of the Internet's most loyal friends.
GIF动图可谓互联网最忠实的朋友之一。
And the story of people trying to make money off the GIF is one that goes back to the earliest days of the internet.
人们通过GIF赚钱的历史也可以追溯到互联网发展早期。
The graphics interchange format was invented by this guy in 1987.
可交换的图像文件（简称“GIF”）发明于1987年，发明者是这个家伙。
He, by the way pronounces it "Jif."
顺便说一句，他会把"gif"发成“Jif”。
It wasn't long before people try to use this technology for business.
此后不久人们就开始将这一技术用于商业用途。
The biggest operation was a website called Animation Factory which produced and sold GIFs of every imaginable variety.
其中最大的公司就是一个叫“动画工厂”的网站，该网站制作并出售大家能想象到的任何动图。
"It seems like they set out to try and animate the entire world,
貌似他们想把世界上的所有东西都做成动画，
starting with this sort of most arcane and bizarre ideas they could think of."
还都是从他们能想到的最神秘、最古怪的想法入手。”
That's Alex Goldman, he's the co-host of one of my favorite podcasts called Reply All.
刚才那位是Alex Goldman，我非常喜欢的播客栏目“一一解答”的主持人之一。
He recently ran a story about Animation Factory's rise in the late '90s.
最近，他正在讲述九十年代末“动画工厂”崛起的故事。
"I gotta say my favorite is: there is a faceless man and he sort of wriggling and floating above him as a UFO."
“我得说，我最喜欢的动画工厂动图是那个扭动着身体，在他上方飘着个UFO的无脸男。”
"There are tens of thousands, the owners say that there's something like half a million GIFs on the site. It's just a an insane insane amount."
“这个网站有上万个动图，网站负责人说有差不多50万个动图，这个数量实在是太太疯狂了。”
"There was a time on the internet when these animated GIFs were the thing you would decorate your website with. There was no aesthetic for the internet."
“曾经，人们还会拿这类动图来装饰自己的网站，完全谈不上什么审美。”
Who knows who needed this image of a guy with an automatic hammer machine,
谁知道谁会用到这张一个男的拿着一把电动斧头的动图，
but someone did and Animation Factory was there to make it.
还真的就有，动画工厂就得制作出来。
"The business model of Animation Factory was if, if there's something that someone may have wanted one of, we're going to make 15 of that thing.
“动画工厂的商业模式就是，如果有人可能需要某个动图，我们就给它做15个出来。”
amazingly that was a viable business strategy in like the late 90s early 2000s."
更令人惊奇的是，在九十年代末本世纪初，这种做法竟然成了一种可行的商业策略。”
Alex said that he heard from someone who was on the board of the company that owned Animation Factory in the early two thousands.
Alex说，他从本世纪初曾任公司董事长的某人那里打听到了一些信息：
"He told me that Animation Factory in at a day was making about 2 million dollars a year in profits.
“他告诉我，动画工厂一年的净利润就能达到200万美元左右，
I mean the internet of the late nineties and early two thousands was a pre blog world."
要知道，九十年代末二十一世纪初博客都还没有出现。
It was before the internet had templates that allowed people to easily make attractive-looking blogs."
那时，互联网都还没有能让用户轻松做出好看的博客页面的模板。”
But the internet matured and by the mid 2000s, web design was informed by professional standards.
但互联网逐渐成熟起来，到了2005年左右，网站设计开始走向专业标准。
Blogs showed up with their standardized templates and GIFs lost their place as the design elements and place holders on the web.
有标准模板的博客开始出现，动图逐渐失去其作为网络设计素材以及占位符的地位。
