Gravatar's founder looks beyond the icons; competitors beware

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.)