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Back in November, Livestream partnered with Tumblr for a "live-GIFing" of the final presidential debate. Seems the experiment was successful enough for a return engagement: The company's bountiful stream of coverage tonight from Times Square will include not just the usual interviews and musical performances, but also GIFs. Glorious GIFs!

This officially solidifies 2012's place in the Internet history books as the year even your 80-year-old nana learned what "those little moving pictures" were.

Livestream has handled the ball drop's official feed (produced by Times Square Alliance and Countdown Entertainment) for the last four years, but the GIFs are new. The results will be cross-posted to Gifwich, the site built by Tumblr for the debate festivities. To illustrate what to expect, a Livestream spokesperson provided this magnificent moving snapshot of our mayor cha-cha-chaing with Lady Gaga at last year's broadcast:

The show starts at 5:55 EST this evening and will run until 12:15 p.m., hosted by one Allison Hagendorf of Fuse TV and the CW. The feed is here; if you bookmark it now, perhaps you can avoid the mistake last year by this reporter, when a bit of Googling accidentally turned up a video from the 2010 festivities, rather than the live ball drop. (File under: When time-shifting goes terribly wrong.)

Besides the GIFs, Livestream also partnered with Toshiba to create a free app (both iOS and Android versions are available) where you can watch the event. The app will also let users submit photos they'd like to see on Toshbia's ginormo Times Square screen.

Betabeat encourages everyone to send Snapchat-style photos of their wooly-sock-clad feet, just to remind everyone freezing their butts off on 42nd and Broadway what they could've done instead.

(Photo: Tumblr)

2012, it seems, is the year the GIF finally receives the recognition it deserves. Long had the short animated images languished on 4chan and Reddit before transitioning over to Tumblr and BuzzFeed. 2012 was the year of the reaction GIF blog, where everyone from law students to editors filled Tumblrs with GIFs meant to capture (and laugh at) the human condition. Then came an avant-garde form of election coverage, where stables of live-GIFers fought with Photoshop to bring their devoted audiences the funniest, most compelling GIFs of the presidential candidates.

Now, the GIF has received the ultimate sign of zeitgeisty approval: "GIF" (the verb) is officially the Oxford American Dictionaries' 2012 word of the year.

“GIF celebrated a lexical milestone in 2012, gaining traction as a verb, not just a noun," Katherine Martin, head of the US dictionaries program at Oxford said in a statement. "The GIF has evolved from a medium for pop-cultural memes into a tool with serious applications including research and journalism, and its lexical identity is transforming to keep pace.”

The competition for 2012's word of the year was understandably fierce. GIF beat out some worthy contenders in order to win the title:

1.       Eurogeddon: the potential financial collapse of the Eurozone, envisaged as having catastrophic implications for the region’s economic stability [from euro + (arma)geddon]

2.       Super PAC: a type of independent political action committee which may raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, and individuals but is not permitted to contribute to or coordinate directly with parties or candidates

3.       Superstorm: an unusually large and destructive storm

4.       Nomophobia: anxiety caused by being without one's mobile phone

[from no and mo(bile) + phobia]

5.       Higgs boson: a subatomic particle whose existence is predicted by the theory that unified the weak and electromagnetic interactions

6.       YOLO: you only live once; typically used as rationale or endorsement for impulsive or irresponsible behavior

7.       MOOC: massive open online course; a university course offered free of charge via the internet

There will undoubtedly be some backlash from angry Drake fans who feel "YOLO" was robbed, but we defer to Mama June for the response to that:

(Photo: RealityTVGIFs)

Update:

In a post published to Oxford Dictionaries' blog, the publisher makes a shocking decision on the widely-debated topic of how to pronounce GIF. Oxford proclaims that both pronunciations of GIF--with a hard or soft G--are considered acceptable:

GIF may be pronounced with either a soft g (as in giant) or a hard g (as in graphic). The programmers who developed the format preferred a pronunciation with a soft g(in homage to the commercial tagline of the peanut butter brand Jiff, they supposedly quipped “choosy developers choose GIF”). However, the pronunciation with a hard gis now very widespread and readily understood. Whichever pronunciation you use, it should of course be the same for both the noun and the verb.

Now what will Tumblr users argue about?

Correction: The headline has been updated; it originally read "Oxford English Dictionary" instead of Oxford American Dictionaries.

A sample.

Monday night, Betabeat headed downtown for a new twist on presidential debate punditry. Rather than merely wisecracking, drinking or even live-blogging, Internet types assembled for something new this election cycle: a “live GIF off” of the proceedings, arranged by Tumblr and Livestream.

Our destination was 111 8th Avenue, most famously Google’s New York HQ but also the home to Livestream, our hosts for the evening. Normally an office, the space had been transformed into a multimedia hub, with screens scattered throughout, streaming feeds from both the debate and (so meta) the event itself.

Footage from Florida showed politicians pressing the flesh even as nearby techies milled about, clustering in small knots and yelling to be heard over the music. Moving through the crowd we spotted big-time tech journalist Ben Parr, as well as the city’s Chief Digital Officer Rachel Haot. Getting the setup ready required moving the desks of Livestream’s 75 or so employees.

“We have a lot of staff who are not very happy about it,” joked Livestream CEO (and newlywed husband to Rachel) Max Haot.

Tumblr’s Liba Rubenstein, who’s responsible for building the site’s community of politicos, explained that the concept came about as her team brainstormed ideas for something different they could do around the debates. Given the popularity of GIFs on the social microblogging site, the idea stuck. The intention is to “help bring this content to a really wide audience and help people engage with something that’s more interesting and multifaceted than just watching a news network.”

Gif maestro. (Photo: via Livestream)

To prepare for the proceedings, Tumblr built GIFwich, a new blog specially designed to serve as a hub for this kind of live event coverage. Now that it's there, the company can conveniently host similar events in the future.

Ms. Rubenstein explained that the six bloggers picked to headline the event—including Bobby Finger and Mark Portilla, one half of a duo that goes by Mr. GIF—were power users, with significant followings and a flair for the visual. “None of them are real unknowns,” she explained over the sound of the LCD Soundsystem song “North American Scum.” “We know their work, we trust them.”

While attendees lined up for the all-American buffet, the GIF makers gathered at a table in the center of the room, prepping for the main event. Once underway, the livestream cut from laptop to laptop, an animation taking shape on each screen. Now moderator Bob Schieffer surrounded by flashing BOCA RATONs, now Barack Obama engulfed in a curtain of images of the first lady.

As the party the debate ended, Betabeat snagged Tumblr editorial director Christopher Price (better known to the Internet at large as topherchris), who’d been GIFing away all night.

He introduced us to his fellow correspondent, blogger Lacey Micallef. Asked what brought her to the event, she explained she has a popular Tumblr and “all I do is make GIFs and animate, pixel art, that kind of shit.” (She then apologized for swearing.) “It’s like a big event,” she explained, before turning to Mr. Price. “Nobody else was doing it, right?”

“We’re not saying in-depth political reporting doesn’t have a place,” Mr. Price added. “This is just  this little bonus to follow along with as you’re watching it on TV.”

(Photo: vimeo.com)

Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Mariah Carey have all taken brief pauses in their pop careers to now become reality show judges on The X Factor, The Voice, and American Idol, respectively. Although it's not for a reality show, another 90's icon, Michael Stipe, is getting in on the judging game.

He's been elected to join the selection committee for "Moving The Still," which of course is the world's first GIF's-only arts festival. The event is being put on by Tumblr as well as the art collection site, Paddle8, and will take place during Miami Art Week from December 4th to the 9th.

Mr. Stipe has a Tumblr of his very own, called "Confessions of a Michael Stipe" where he posts lots of pictures of art and architecture. This isn't the first time the R.E.M. frontman has been involved with a Tumblr project before. A video profile of Mr. Stipe was featured on Tumblr's Storyboard the week that it launched and heard him saying that his site was like "a little bit of a scrapbook" for himself.

He's surprisingly very qualified to judge this contest because he's a maker of high art GIF's himself. This is one of his creations:

See, this is the kind of post that gets a lot of notes from people who love old computer screens and neon colors–also known as all of Tumblr’s entire user base.