GIF still going strong

In this article it is explained how those little animated GIF's that you see everywhere are still popular.  If you were in the animation class last year, you know we made something like this before only it was drawn out. It was called a thaumatrope. This technique was founded by (1) Eadweard Muybridge, a 134 year old process (2) and, Oxford Dictionaries even chose GIF as its USA Word of the Year for 2012, (3).  I don't think this is new.  GIF's are everywhere and people use them all the time; I think the detail and bio behind GIF's is unknown though.  And everyone has done it before.  Whenever you got bored in class and you started drawing a circle at the bottom corner of your notebook over and over again; when you thumbed through the pages the circle "moved" across the page. And for my question; Oxford chooses the word of the year? (I didn't know that).