You’ve been using Gravatar for a long time as a way to show a little bit of your identity around the web. Everywhere you dropped an email, be it a comment or the creation of an account, the owner of that website could choose to use your details to load up the picture that you’d decide to associate with that email address. Last night we rolled out the first step in bringing a whole lot more context and personality to your presence online.
You didn’t think the design update was the only change we made, did you? Every gravatar now supports the addition of full profile information against it, so that you can paint a much richer picture of who you are. You can upload a bunch of your favorite photos to your profile (they don’t have to be gravatars at all), and you can even verify your ownership of other online profiles and services. When you verify that you own something, people will be able to tell this is your account and not some imposter.
We’re continuing the tradition of complete openness that Gravatar has been known for, so nothing you put into your profile will be locked behind proprietary APIs or a scary terms of service — what you choose to share in your profile will be open to the world.
You’ll find some cool features on the new profiles: you can have a gallery of your favorite photos, add a variety of contact methods, and link your other profiles. Every linked account is verified so you know it’s not an impostor, and we also might be able to do cool stuff in the future like aggregate your content or update your avatar in multiple places when you update Gravatar.
While we’re all getting familiar with this new system, you will only be able to view your own profile on Gravatar.com, so you’ll have a bit of time to spruce it up before we’re out of beta. Profiles will become public for everyone soon so make sure to check yours out and update it to include (or leave out) exactly what you want. If you remove all information from your profile, then other people will only be able to see your Gravatar, just like right now.
If you’re running a website that already uses gravatars, we’ll have some more information soon on how you can make the most of these new profiles!
Gravatar Blog
79 responses
Actually, what I would like is for my gravatar to link to my website instead of the gravatar website. Can it do that?
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The link that’s applied to your Gravatar is up to the website it’s displayed on. If hovercards are enabled on a site and they don’t put any other link on your image, then we automatically add a link back to your Profile. If there’s already a link there though, then that link stays there.
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Super Sache! Das werde ich doch gleich mal ausprobieren.
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[…] einiger Zeit wurde der Online-Dienst Gravatar um öffentliche Profile ergänzt. Jetzt gibt es auch eine Möglichkeit, die vielzähligen Informationen auch auf einer […]
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i still dont get the point of how to utilize this gravatar…
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I started a wordpress blog and in my profile settings it was already linked to gravatar and had a section called ‘my public profile’. I moved my blog to my domain name server and had to start all over again but the new wordpress site doesn’t have my public profile in the user settings and is not linked to gravatar.com. I had a look at my gravatar profile and can’t work out how to install this in wordpress and I have tried different plug ins but they are not the same one. Any help would be greatly appreciated
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That level of integration is currently only available on WordPress.COM. If you’re on a self-hosted WordPress, just make sure your email address matches up with your Gravatar one to load your image. We’re working on a new plugin that will provide better integration in this case also.
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Is there a way to add my google voice widget to the contact information instead of listing my phone number?
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Not yet Tonya, but we’re going to be adding other options in the future so I’ll add this to the list for consideration.
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I spend quite alot of time commenting on blogs and taking part in communities… It would be great if gravatar provided a centralised feed of all my activity using my gravatar id.. like all my wordpress.com comments for instance..
just a thought!!
or is this already available and ive missed it?
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[…] 02, 2010 | Posted by Beau Lebens Back in March when we announced Gravatar profiles, your profile page remained private so that only you could access it. Now that […]
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Hi Beau
found gravatars much flexible and friendly, nice job
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Right now we are able to get our self-hosted blogs to get the profile pics / avatars from Gravatar.
Are we able to sync our wordpress user account profiles with the ones @ Gravatar as well?
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Not yet Ivan, but it’s something we’re hoping to offer once we get profiles fully rolled out 🙂
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Hi @Beau, this all is a great idea, but im developing a site and would need my gravatar an all others to be displayed once they log on to the site. But i have tried to upload pictures, confirmed them, my website would confirm them as well but my picture doesnt display. However, one picture on it shows but it might be automatic ‘Gravatar logo’…all im asking is, if this is because gravatar is not public yet, or there is different reason for it.
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I’m new to WordPress etc, but have just set up a private blog. I’m a little worried that my private blog will have public profiles. Will Gravatar have an option for keeping my profile private and non-searchable? And why can’t I delete it?
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Currently that is not an option, so I would recommend just removing any personal information which will effectively remove your profile. We’re looking at adding a simple switch option to opt out of public profiles entirely.
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Thanks for the explanation about the Gravatar url’s, @Beau.
I really like how I’m able to enter multiple email addresses and associate them each with a different avatar icon, but they all tie back to my same gravatar profile. I have this icon, the black-and-white curly tusk piggy for my yahoo account that I use for WordPress activities, a pink piggy for my gmail account that I use with blogger comments, and a chrome one for Typepad comments.
After re-reading the comment thread above, I used good high rez pics, so the image look great. The paper clip on the full-size image is cute! Thanks for all your work on this.
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thanks for all the work!! 🙂 blessings
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How can I keep Gravatar from updating my profile details on WordPress.com? I have more detail there than the 140 characters permitted on Gravatar.
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@Gil: you can’t, since they are stored in exactly the same place. We’re looking at the best way to allow longer bios, but right now if you modify Gravatar, then it will also modify WordPress.com, which means it’ll be limited to 140 characters in both places.
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As always, love the services/design that comes from Automattic. Now, you just need to add multiple Twitter accounts (one for work, one for personal).
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How do you make the profile public? No one can see it.
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Profiles are not public just yet, and that’s not a setting that you have missed or anything. We’ve got them all set private until we’re done with a few modifications to how things work, then they’ll all be opened up.
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Hi Beau,
Thanks for the tip – but even when I click on that link, up it all comes in Thai! I’m in an Internet cafe so it might be just this computer,but all the same, it’s very frustrating.
I’ll keep trying.
Thanks,
Marcus
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I really like this service. The profiles look cool.
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I’m clearly missing something obvious, but I don’t understand how my gravatar profile and image will be linked to a URL. Will it be different for each site? I think someone said some thing like that in these comments, maybe I saw it on the Gravatar page for developers, I don’t recall.
Wnen I log on to the gravatar site, it shows me as user
http://en.gravatar.com/elliexxxxxxxxxx
and the elliexxxxxx part is my WordPress user name. Can anyone help me understand this better?
Thanks!
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@Elli: Things are all linked up via an md5() hash of your email address, or via your username. Normally that will all be handled by whoever manages the websites you’re commenting on/using, but you can also add a link to your profile if you’re prompted for a link. Note that profiles are not actually public just yet 😉
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This is really nice. Question: I use one gravatar for work-related posts and another for personal posts. Can each gravatar have a separate profile? I’d prefer that to creating multiple accounts.
Thanks,
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Currently, your profile is only attached to the “Primary Email” on an account, so you can only have 1 profile per account. If you’d like 2 profiles, then for now you’ll need to split things out into 2 accounts.
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Hi,
I want to upload a photo but have a problem. I live in Thailand and everytime I go to the site everything is in Thai. Can you please tell me where the language button is so I can switch to English?
Thank you.
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@Marcus: You should be able to just visit http://en.gravatar.com (note the “en.” at the start) and it will be forced to English.
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The Profile is looking very kool now, the effects & color combination are excellent.
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Superbe idée qu’un profil qui vas bien me plaire. merci
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All you should need to “confirm ownership of different services/properties online” are reciprocal rel=”me” attributes.
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We’re looking at different ways of confirming ownership of sites, and rel=me is definitely one of them.
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You’ve added hCard microformat mark-up, which is great, but it needs tweaking:
* The “ADR” component is broken. If used, it must have child properties. Alternatively, as you’re using class=”label”, omit class=”adr”.
* You ought to include the links to external profiles and other sites with class=”url”, as well as rel=”me” (which you’re currently using on the former, but not the latter).
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Yep, the current hCard implementation is very much a first pass, and was mostly based on what I could get to show up in the Operator extension for Firefox. I’m going to do a more thorough implementation once the profiles are public (and there’s a lot more stuff coming that in my opinion is way easier to use than hCard anyway), but thanks for the pointers!
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ça vas être très utile pour avoir un profil via Gravatar et ont pourras se passer de carte de visite ensuite.
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What do I need to do to get my Gravatar picture to show on my profile like that and to show in wordpress? I’ve been trying for two days now and believe I have done all I can do. Really frustrating..
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[…] So how do you do that? The easiest way is often with Gravatar. Gravatar is expanding now too. Gravatar will now offer profiles so someone can find out more about you. If you have not done so, get your Gravatar set up […]
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Je trouve que ça manquais et que ça vas être bien utile. merci
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[…] Gravatar, Now With Full Profiles […]
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[…] : Blog Gravatar Gravatar, Twitter Web […]
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I agree with Giorgos Androulidakis. There should be a way to have our own custom profile URL, not necessarily a custom domain as what Dave Zatz was suggesting. That WordPress username (and actually original WordPress.com subdomain/url) is obsolete. Can we at least change it?
And please, allow 5 characters for the custom URL. Thanks!
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Brilliant idea !!! – finally some thought into profiling the Who’s Who in the Social World. Keep up the great work, and service.
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[…] a person’s photo) that show up along-side comments on most blogs.A few days ago, Gravatar added something new to the service – full profiles.You didn’t think the design update was the only change we […]
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I use gravatars in author boxes. It would be really cool if a plugin existed that would allow the new gravatar profile to embed seamlessly into my wordpress site an an author/profile page.
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Just keep your eyes and ears open and you might find something like that available soon… 😉
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So Beau…
Any word on this yet? 🙂
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Owao……. Very nice……..
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Nice one, and easy to use. I have updated my gravatar profile url. my feature request is to add more verified services such as VisualCV.com, Emurse.com, or even custom add more list/ link to verified services box.
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We’re definitely looking at adding more verifiable services to the list, but we wanted to start with the popular ones. We might look at having some sort of public-vote based system to decide on which ones to support in the future. In the meantime you can add any URL to the “My Links” section.
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I love gravatar 🙂
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I have to say, I’m not nearly as excited by this as I would be if Gravatar were an open-source, open standard. As it is, it’s just another proprietary service, and I don’t think it has any business being a de facto web standard (like Automattic appears to be trying to make it).
When I spoke with Matt about it on his site, he didn’t think it was that big a deal since it was just a pic URL redirector. I have to wonder if he wasn’t already planning all this at the time.
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looks realy great. I’m already filling my acount with the new informations. Thank you.
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The Add url, etc. section of the Edit Profile does not seem to be working.
Also, there needs to be some way to prioritize the photos displayed on the profile page. The standard gravatar pix appears to be displayed by default, but it looks awful when scaled to the profile page size.
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If you use a higher-resolution version image to crop out your gravatar, then the high-res version will be available as your main picture. If you’re having specific troubles with adding URLs, please let us know at support@gravatar.com.
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Really a cool feature. Thank’s before.
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Beau, what I mean is can I have a custom domain (www.mydomain.com) point to the profile instead of xxxx.gravatar.com or gravatar.com/xxxx?
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Please add an option to verify blogs on other platforms than wp.com using openid or some sort of microid.
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We’re looking at other ways of verifying sites/domains, and this is on our list 😉
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This is an awesome initiative. The more we can centralize information in ways that individuals control, the more you increase both their power to communicate AND remain private.
I’m looking forward to learning about the site-owner info!
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This is a cool new feature!
However, if Gravatar is to become an online identity hub, I think it is crucial for users to be able to pick the Gravatar profile URL. Moreover, as far as I can tell, the profile URL for each user has normally been generated in association with an earlier and possibly obsolete WordPress user name, which cannot been changed currently.
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Hi Beau,
I also like where this is going, keep it up.
I couldn’t find a “contact support” link to submit a bug report… so I guess I’ll post it here. I don’t mean to clutter up your comments.
1. My primary gravatar is a small image; on my profile page it’s stretched out to many times its size, so of course it looks all messy and pixelated
2. The edit profile screen truncates the last 4 characters of my Description. I’d fixed it so it’d be exactly 140 chars; even if I make it fewer chars, it still cuts off the last several characters
3. Nothing happened when I tried to add Digg and Vimeo; it just stayed on my profile screen
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1. If you upload a new version of your gravatar using a higher-res original image, then we’ll have a better version available for the big one on your profile 🙂
2. That’s strange, it seems to work fine for me. Which browser are you using (assuming it’s still a problem?)
3. Can you try these again please? Might be a temporary issue of some sort, because they both seem to be working fine now.
BTW: You can always email us at support@gravatar.com for help!
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[…] announced that it aims to be more than just your pretty face gracing comments around the Internet, adding […]
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It can’t display Traditional Chinese in personal links.
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Hi Kansir – thanks for your bug report here and via email. We are working on support for non-ASCII characters now, and will aim to have it running before we release profiles to the public if possible.
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Cool! Even cooler… Will I be able to associate with a domain I own?
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If that domain runs WordPress then you can associate with your WordPress installation. We’re looking at other ways to confirm ownership of different services/properties online as well.
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It’s cool to see Gravatar move further into identity management. But if you want to be taken seriously, shouldn’t your login form at least be https?
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You can log in at https://secure.gravatar.com/site/login/ if you like. I’ll look at redirecting all login requests to go via that URL. Thanks for the suggestion.
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Interesting. In the future maybe people won’t need to update their profiles on multiple sites, and they can pull the info from Gravatar instead.
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This is awesome stuff Beau. Nicely done. It’ll be great to see how far you can push this and how quickly people will start using the new data. Seeing as this is such a widely used service, you can see how it could quickly become quite useful to add other data to a user’s Gravitar profile.
Nicely done. Can’t wait to see how it all pans out. 🙂
JB
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It’s a good news. Now we can interact more and get connected to each other with our Gravatar profile picture. Keep it going!
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Wow, that’s cool stuff, thank you!
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Good stuff Beau. I like where this and IntenseDebate are going.
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This is a great idea! With all those gravatars floating around, why not make them social profiles? I think it’s a great incentive to get people to use gravatars more and for users to get more leverage from taking the time to post a comment.
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