Gravatar Provides Avatars for Blogs

Posted on July 26, 2005

A gravatar is an 80x80 pixel icon that you can use to identify yourself when you post comments on a blog that accepts gravatars. You can get one at Gravatar.com and you can find out more about them on the Gravatar blog or in the Gravatar FAQ. Gravatars are tied to a user's email address and are most frequently used in weblog comment sections.

Think of gravatar.com as a dictionary that associates email addresses and avatar images. When you leave a comment on a weblog and provide your email address, the weblog can use your email address to look up your avatar. Since the dictionary is available to anyone, a single avatar image can represent you across many different weblogs.

Instructions for including gravatars in a weblog are provided on the site. According to Gravatar's blog at least 10,000 gravatars have been created -- but this was an entry from several months ago so there are likely even more gravatar accounts today.