A recent 50% increase in gravatar requests has pushed the current server to the limits, and response times have slowed accordingly. I have disabled signup and login while I migrate the database to the Gravatar 2.0 schema and setup the new and improved gravatar servers. Once the new servers are in place, you should see gravatars being served with unprecedented speed! After the serving issue is solved, I will deploy the Gravatar 2.0 website, full of usability improvements and new features.
Great things are ahead!
Gravatar Blog 