Using your photo across the internet: Gravatar.

By rerockstar • April 22nd, 2010

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Want to be famous?

Consistency across the internet has become quite an amazing thing over the past few years. It used to be that every time you wanted to join a new site, you had to enter in a ton of personal data, make up a username (and hope it wasn’t taken), password, and fill in a security question and answer for when you forgot them both. That’s gotten a lot easier thanks to concepts like OpenID, Facebook Connect, and Disqus. When it comes to your avatar (the small photo that often appears next to your name on blogs, forums, chat rooms, Facebook, and Twitter), it used to be that you had to upload a new photo on each site you wanted to join. With Gravatar, your life can be a lot easier.

The concept of Gravatar is simple. One photo, your avatar, used across multiple sites without any real work on your part. Once you sign up for a Gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar), fill out your profile information, and upload a photo, you simply use your credentials on a site (in the case of this site, when leaving a comment it asks for name, email, and website) and when you post to that site, your Gravatar appears next to your comments.

You know you want one…

So head on over to the Gravatar site, fill out your info and head out into the internet armed with a new sense of purpose. If you’re a regular commenter on blogs, you’ll soon find that people will identify with you faster (we’re very visual creatures). You’ll be surprised at just how many places use Gravatars to identify you and it’s one less upload you’ll have to wait for when joining a new site. So go ahead and join me and millions of others at Gravatar – then come back and start reading and leaving comments.

photo courtesy of elvissa