What is a Gravatar?

A Gravatar, or Globally Recognized Avatar, is an image or picture of yourself or something that represents you.  Avatar images have been around for a long time used on bulletin boards and blogs to show users who you are. 

Avatars were usually local to the system you were logged into.  Now we have Globally Recognized Avatars available through gravatar.com .  It is a free service that lets you create an account and assign Avatar Images to your email addresses.  Then when you are on a system or blog that recognizes you it will show your Gravatar next to your name in comments and sometimes posts.    The use of gravatars has become more and more popular and more systems are adding support for them. 

At gravatar.com you can upload a picture you already have, that you can then crop and save, or you can take a live snapshot using your web-cam and use that as your gravatar.  They do not supply any images.  Generic avatar images are available many other places on the net.  Just do a search for “avatar images’ and you’ll find all kinds.

Go ahead!  Get yourself an Avatar today and post a comment somewhere.  You’ll see your avatar show up.

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• What is a Gravatar anyway?