Yar! We Are Gravatar…
Yep, unless we have a ‘Gravatar’, when we post a comment on a blog we will remain, forever, that ‘grey’ man icon… or, if we’re lucky, a randomly generated bit of nonsense. See that in action in the Comments below this post.
Gravatars are Globally Recognized Avatars. An avatar or gravatar is an icon, or representation, of a user in a shared virtual reality, such as a forum, chat, website, or any other form of online community in which the user(s) wish to have something to distinguish themselves from other users.
Created by Tom Werner, gravatars make it possible for a person to have one avatar across the entire web. Avatars are usually an 80px by 80px image that the user will create themselves.
Let’s start as we mean to go on, to be recognisable on the web. You’ll find that you start recognising people in forums and on blogs, and they you.
THIS IS A GOOD THING !
I personally don’t care if that’s a real photo, a caricature (in my case) or a company logo but once you’ve decided what it’s to be then stick with it. In Social Networks too it’s a must.
Mea Culpa: I admit that in the past I tried to create a separate image for every site/email I own i.e. different images for different email addresses – and that’s still true to a certain extent – but if starting from scratch with a blog today I’d want to stamp my image and profile on the web from day one!
Relevant links for this tutorial:
Related posts:
Still working on getting all my Gravatars (mostly) to the same image
Here’s one I prepared earlier
See what I’m saying here?
Like this?