It's interesting to poke around and see how the game of telephone works.

The first mentions I saw on Twitter were from February 2018[0]. Subsequent Black History Months[1] would reiterate how she invented GIFs or sometimes animated GIFs. You even get crazy things like how she invented the animated GIF while working with the Obama administration[2]. (That post references an article that talks about her working with the Obama administration that doesn't mention GIFs[3]. The author just merged the two things she's credited with.)

In 2024, the story is that she invented the GIF at Netscape[4], which obviously makes little sense. It could be a reference to GIFs looping, but I see no evidence for that, especially since her LinkedIn[5] doesn't say she worked at Netscape. She worked at Macromedia, which involved work with Netscape, and I suspect the genesis is her work on Shockwave during that time (2005-2010), and that was taken to be a precursor to animated GIFs (obviously false, but an easy mistake for someone young and non-technical. Maybe it's a cultural precursor to modern animated GIF usage in people's minds?)

Overall, though, this is a pretty dumb thing for them to claim, even if the claim is widespread across the Internet these days. She was roughly 17 when animated GIFs were first developed.

As I said, it's interesting to see how the game of telephone plays out. I don't think anyone involved in this was intentionally spreading false information, and I don't really expect random Twitter users to fact-check carefully. I would like NYT to put some effort into it. As it is, we now have a NYT touting an obviously-false claim when she actually did a lot of really important and impressive stuff they could focus on instead. There's no need to spread fake accolades for her. Her actual contributions stand on their own.

[0] https://x.com/Reel365/status/960288180447694848

[1] https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A... / https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A... / https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A...

[2] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:share:7034543821...

[3] https://theblackwallsttimes.com/2022/08/18/computer-scientis...

[4] https://seattlemedium.com/lisa-gelobter-the-trailblazing-com...

[5] https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisagelobter/details/experience/

Addendum: In the paragraph after merging Shockwave and GIFs, NYT references a Forbes interview[0] where she specifically says she didn't invent GIFs.

NYT:

> Ms. Gelobter was the director of program management at Macromedia where she helped develop Shockwave into a web plug-in that allowed for video games and animation on the web, turning still images into moving GIFs — animated images known as a graphics interchange format.

Interview linked in the very next paragraph:

> Gelobter: I want to clarify that I did not create GIFs although I get credited for it a lot. I think people conflated thinking about animation on the web as being animated GIFs but that was Shockwave. Again, what we did with Shockwave was transformative.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jumokedada/2021/02/18/meet-the-...

The NYT seems to have an interest in making Mamdani and his administration more palatable to their readers:

http://lee-phillips.org/nytIHRA