December 24, 2008

Get Thee A Gravatar

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

Little pictures dwell by post comments. They’re found on blogs, forums, and other places, and they’re called avatars.

The word avatar comes from the Sanskrit word for “tiny picture next to my blog post.” No, seriously, it’s a word for a divine being in human form. On the Internet, it’s a term for a tiny picture that represents your on-line personality.

Most blogs and forums have the ability for you to choose or (better) upload an avatar. People pick all kinds of images for their avatars, from actual pictures of themselves, to art images, images of famous people, animals, and so on. I suppose it’s similar to that silly picture of the cat or flower that people never change from their Windows logon account.

The latest rage in avatars is the Gravatar. Gravatar stands for Globally Recognized Avatar. It’s a central repository for your e-mail addresses and associated images. So what you do is go to visit the Gravatar web site, set up an account, then choose or upload pictures.

The pictures you select on Gravatar are associated with your e-mail address. If a blog or forum understands how Gravatars work, it then relays your e-mail address (the one you used to register for the site) back to Gravatar HQ and — blam! — all your posts are flagged with your Gravatar image.

What makes Gravatars so handy is that you need only set up the image once. As long as you use the same e-mail address for those blogs and forums you visit, the Gravatar image sticks with that e-mail address. Change the image once, and every blog and forum you visit changes the image as well.

If I ever update this software to the latest version of WordPress, then you too can use Gravatars. Bug me. Thanks!

4 Comments

  1. Sounds similar to the OpenID alliance – which makes me wonder how successful this will be. I know many, many people (net savvy people) who have no idea about OpenID, and even I don’t use it – I have already registered on each site individually, and I log on to five different services a day. I should try to use an OpenID, but with Firefox remembering all my logins, it is easy to get by without it.

    Comment by sriksrid — December 25, 2008 @ 7:17 pm

  2. I don’t see how the Gravatar people can make money, unless they just end up selling all the e-mail addresses to spammers, but I doubt that. The OpenID thing is nifty, but I’m not sure I trust it yet. As with you, I use Safari and it remembers most of my passwords. There is an issue with having multiple passwords on a single site, however. Weird.

    Comment by admin — December 25, 2008 @ 8:44 pm

  3. I’m a firm believer in monetizing hard work and innovation, so this seems like another cool idea that lost its ability to monetize when they made it free. Even a few bucks a year. Something like Dan’s blog is fine as a free service because he can promote his books (which is a perfect way to monetize his work here) but I have never understood completely free services like Gravatar.

    Comment by jamh51 — December 27, 2008 @ 12:48 pm

  4. My guess is that Gravatar is looking to be sold. That’s a model that works, sometimes. If they build a large enough audience and prove popularity, then a Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo might buy it.

    Comment by admin — December 27, 2008 @ 1:04 pm

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