Imagine this: you set your browser to download only the first N bytes of each image, showing you a decent preview. If you want more detail on a particular image, you tap it, and the browser requests the next N bytes (or the rest of the file, if you prefer).
And to enable this, the site only needed to create one high-resolution image.
Seems like a victory for loading speeds, for low-bandwidth, and for content creation.
I think FLIF looks incredible.