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For some interesting thoughts on where Gravatar could go in the future, see Joshuaink's Seven and a half questions for Tom Werner from April 2005.
I get the feeling there is a bigger picture with these little comment avatars of yours, where do you see Gravatar five years from now?
You're right. Gravatars are only the beginning to what I envision as a comprehensive comment management and profile system.
How often have you left a comment on a weblog and never returned to follow up on the ensuing conversation? It happens to me all the time. I forget the URL, and I'm not about to go subscribing to the comment feeds for every weblog I frequent, so commenting can almost seem futile. The gravatar system is uniquely positioned to solve this problem. Since all gravatars are served from a central location, I have the ability to determine (through the HTTP referrer header) what gravatars appear on what web pages.
Worth noting: the Gravatar tagline reflects this larger vision: "Your Identity -- Online".
Gravatars aren't just for blogs. This acquisition puts Automattic in a good position to address an even larger market:
15) Why hasn't anyone been able to aggregate all of my comment activity across the entire web and turn it into a feed that I can put into my lifestream on Tumblr? There are a bunch of companies working on it, but I don't think anyone has nailed it yet. And I am not just talking about blog comments, I am talking about ratings and reviews on Amazon, Yelp, Menupages, Digg, etc, etc.
We covered several comment management companies last month: BigSwerve, coComment, Co.mments, Disqus, Intense Debate, and SezWho. With Automattic potentially moving into their space, perhaps some of them will offer a lightweight avatar service. I think that's a good way to start a relationship with blogs (and beyond) that are reluctant to outsource the entire commenting feature. (That's certainly true here at Blogosm.)
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Automattic (the folks behind WordPress) just acquired Gravatar, ("Globally Recognized Avatars"). (Hat tip: GigaOM.) What is it?
an 80x80 pixel avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?
How does it work? Behind the scenes, the blogging software sends an encoded version of the commenter's email address; Gravatar returns an image. Plugins or HOW TO notes exist for WordPress, MovableType, Blogger, LiveJournal and several other blogging services and Web development languages. We also found a Python implementation that's not listed on the Gravatar site. (We don't yet support Gravatar here at Blogcosm, though it's been on TO DO list since before we launched the site!)
A blogger has several options when adding gravatars:
- maximum "rating" (G, PG, R, X) to help ensure that the returned icon is appropriate for the blog's audience (though relying on the commenter's own rating)
- icon size, currently from 1 to 80 pixels (Automattic announced future support for 128px)
- fallback URL to display an alternate image if no gravatar is available for the commenter's email address
One potential drawback: fetching an icon across the network for every comment may increase page load times. WordPress users can try the Gravatars2 Plugin from ZenPax. Scott Yang offers a Generic Gravatar Cache based on PHP. Jon Galloway provides details on caching in ASP.NET.
On the business side: financial terms were not disclosed. Gravatar developer Tom Werner is a Ruby fan (blog name: Ruby is Awesome) but Automattic plans to rewrite "to fit directly into our WordPress.com grid" (presumably in PHP). In any case, Tom lists his employer as Powerset (a hot startup which he apparently joined in February) so I doubt that employment was ever in the cards. In any case, congrats to Tom on what I hope was a nice ROI for a very useful service.
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