What is a Gravatar?

Gravatar (an abbreviation for globally recognized avatar) is a service for providing globally-unique avatars which was created by Tom Werner. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravatar.

Having your own Gravatar allows your photo to show on your own Blog posts as well as those of the other sites and Blogs that you leave comments on. If a site is set to use gravatars and you do not have one setup, instead of your cute mug, those viewing your comments will see the blue icon I have displayed here in this article.

The benefit of having your own Gravatar is that it let’s people see you and makes your comments more personable and credible. Being online in today’s environment is all about people, it is important that you use your most important tool — your brand — which is you!

You’ll see Gravatars that are logos or other icons — which sometimes make me wonder what these onliners were thinking. Some are not very professional in appearance nor do they lend to the contributors legitimacy. Remember, we’re talking about perception here and that’s why a nice photo of yourself works best for business activities.

It only takes a moment to setup and then your Gravatar will display automatically on any site that has Gravatar support as well as seamlessly on WordPress.com.

How Gravatars work is based on your e-mail address. Therefore when you set up your Gravatar account it is important that you use the e-mail address that you use when posting and commenting on other’s sites/Blogs. Your e-mail address is what will trigger the display of the photo associated with it.

Gravatars are 80 pixels in height and width (80 x 80). So make sure you use a photo that fits those dimensions so that your face doesn’t look skewed when the system resizes your photo to those dimensions.

So what are you waiting for — go get your Gravatar! Then come back here and introduce yourself!