You will have to have total influence of over 10000 (Rank 10) in order to use a gif as an avatar. I see you are Rank 9 so you can't use gifs and I guess your friend is Rank 10 or higher.

The less gif avatars we have the better. Some of them are flashing rapidly, which make it difficult if not impossible to read the posts without nausea :\

I wish there was a way to turn them off, but now I simply skip reading post and scroll the page to get them out of sight.

Ah, well that makes sense