WordPress.com Now Gravified
December 10, 2008 | Posted by apokalyptik
I still remember the post Matt made back when we announced that we’d acquired Gravatar.com… “Of course I should be able to have my avatar wherever I go! Of course email is a great way to key it! Of course there should be an open API for any platform!” And we meant it. We have always intended to make Gravatar.com THE avatar system for WordPress.com — It just made sense.
We flipped the switch on the evening of Friday Dec 5, 2008. I’m happy to report that there was only minimal headache involved all around. I’m also happy to note that the extra traffic (to the tune of something like 900 requests per second during peak usage) had a fairly negligible impact on Gravatars infrastructure. I mention this to lay to rest any doubts that you might have about Gravatars ability to handle the extra requests that even high traffic web services might send our way.
Just as WordPress.com will continue to focus on being the best hosted blogging platform that it can be, Gravatar will focus on being the best Avatar platform that it can be. We’ll continue to grow both products, and continue to mature the integration between them. We’re also working on eventually allowing UI integration with non Automattic owned sites (but lets not get ahead of ourselves.)
I’m looking forward to announcing some more really cool stuff for both developers and users… Some API goodness, and some UI improvements. I’ll also continue working, as always, under the hood to make Gravatar as fast and reliable as possible.
Cheers until then!
DK
joint
litwc Says:
December 10, 2008 at 4:28 am
Okay, you’ve got me curious. You have any graphs you can share showing this spike? I’d love to see how much more WordPress.com added to the pull on gravatar.com. Also I’m curious if any special caching was added for it.
minadesam Says:
December 10, 2008 at 4:55 am
It seems gravatar will fill our lives! Next thing, even our email and documents will be sent with our pics. tks a lot, great product.
Don Worthley Says:
December 10, 2008 at 6:55 am
I can’t wait to hear more about the API! I’ve been waiting for a while and am excited to see what you have planned.
Jasper Says:
December 10, 2008 at 9:27 am
All that fuzz about a small image
beautymakeupdivas.com Says:
December 10, 2008 at 9:41 am
hehehe I am happy.
Aw Guo Says:
December 10, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Cool DK!
very happy for this news.~
kevingeorg Says:
December 10, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Now that sounds promising, looking forward for enhancements and improvements to the already perfect Avatar System from my point of view
Dogsbody Says:
December 10, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Love it, I already have Gravatar’s on my e-mail thanks to a Thunderbird Addon and am in the process of adding Gravatars to our charity marathon website so that every racer can have a picture next to their race entry
Thanks for a great service
chris Says:
December 10, 2008 at 4:04 pm
congrats. thats some impressive usage.
word.
Chris Says:
December 10, 2008 at 4:55 pm
So much to look forward to
Alex Says:
December 10, 2008 at 5:26 pm
This is quite interesting. Seems like Gravater is to blogs what avatars are to forums.
CircleReader Says:
December 10, 2008 at 11:14 pm
I also have email Gravatars, thanks to the Message Faces add-on for Thunderbird. Putting a face on electronic communication is a Good Thing! Thanks to the folks behind Gravatar for getting it done.
Randall Arnold Says:
December 11, 2008 at 4:06 am
I cannot find any info on incorporating my Gravatar icon into my WordPress site. I can only use my Blavatar. ???
greg burrus Says:
December 11, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Kudos – excellent job. I think the Gravtars work very well and are great for marketing.I wish the user interface had one more iota of instruction so you don’t have to guess when to use the back button, versus when to use the application buttons versus guessing what to do nextt but hey it works. Keep up the good work.
Relenta Says:
December 12, 2008 at 11:31 am
We hope that Gravatar will expand it’s reach from the blogs into the realm of webmail! We’ll make the first step and adopt it within Relenta (www.relenta.com), email-based contact and task manager.
Gmail has profile pictures, but they are only visible to other Gmail users. We hope that in the future all webmail platforms will use Gravatar.
Keep up the good work, folks!
Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand … « rufus still thinks about his title … Says:
December 20, 2008 at 11:53 pm
[...] es jetzt schon alles gibt – Avatare, Gravatare und seit kurzem auch noch die Blavatare. Da soll sich noch einer auskennen. Ausprobiert wird [...]
Anthony Says:
December 23, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Just added gravatars to our blog. Very exciting!
90block Says:
December 26, 2008 at 8:36 am
Cool Hah
Rémy Says:
December 29, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Great News, I just downloaded the WP Plugin and I can’t wait to see the first results
Corinne Says:
February 5, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Sounds Good.
netessentials Says:
April 14, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Kinda of cool way to associate pictures with emails and such. Sounds like this could be universal on the web, and able to be integrated into alot of areas…
Viju Says:
June 26, 2009 at 7:36 am
i like gravatars!
however, i’m actually thinking about a new feature…
for example:
- i set a global avatar, ok
- i use it in 50 sites, ok
- in some of these i’d like to have a different (little)global avatar… i mean, in these 2 forums, i want to use another avatar…
so, it could be nice to be able to set in gravatar, the specific url in which every avatar should work… leaving however a global avatar working for the others…
this would give us more control…
Resveratrol Says:
July 28, 2009 at 12:40 pm
I think the Gravtars work very well and are great for marketing.I wish the user interface had one more iota of instruction.
Mover Packer Says:
July 28, 2009 at 12:43 pm
I just downloaded the WP Plugin and I can’t wait to see the first results
Blogger Says:
September 23, 2009 at 4:47 pm
I also noticed that BlogEasy (www.blogeasy.com) has gravatars enabled.