Lake Neuron

Many different web sites, bulletin boards, blogs, instant messaging programs and what have you encourage you to post an image avatar or buddy icon of yourself — some people use a photo, others, citing privacy concerns, use a cartoon avatar or some other image.

Gravatar (for Globally Recognized AVATAR) is a site which proposes to help you keep these images straight. You upload your chosen avatar (photo, cartoon, logo or what have you) and associate it with a particular e-mail address. Then, whenever you register with, leave a comment at, or otherwise log into a Gravatar-enabled site using that e-mail address, that site queries Gravatar and automatically retrieves your avatar of choice, without you having to upload it each time. If you want to change your avatar, to reflect your mood or situation, you can do so at any time, quite easily, and it will automatically be updated at all of the different Gravatar-enabled sites where it’s being used.

You can have a different avatar for each e-mail address if you like.

This is one of those ideas that could be really successful or could fall flat on its face, depending on whether it achieves the critical mass needed to make it an Internet standard. If web sites don’t enable Gravatars, there won’t be any benefit to the user.

However, working in Gravatar’s favor is that it was just acquired by Automattic, the people behind WordPress and Akismet. I assume that Gravatar is likely to be closely linked to future updates of WordPress. WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg has recently enabled Gravatar for the comments on his site, which is not surprising since he just bought the company. I have also enabled Gravatar for the comments here.

Tags: avatars, blogging, gravatar, WordPress