Get a Gravatar
You might have noticed in my comments some of the commenters have their smiling faces grinning out at you while others have a drab gray blob.
This my friends, is the Gravatar!
A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?
Essentially they help you be more recognized. As we discussed in the social media branding article, this kind of consistency can be very useful for making yourself known in communities. Use the same avatar on Twitter, forums, flickr and blog comments and people are sure to recognize you.
You can have your own Gravatar in minutes, just provide the email address you usually comment with.
Gravatar.com is now owned by the same people who build and run WordPress, and unlike some other avatar services, it is easy to integrate into your blog AND keep away the saucier images. The new version of WordPress has capability built it, though you might need to tweak your template, and for the rest of us there is a simple plugin. Other platforms support them too. See how to add Gravatars to your blog here.
What are you waiting for? Smiley faces make your comments more welcoming 
Posted on May 15th, 2008 by Chris Garrett in Blogging
I love Gravatars, I am more keen to read comments on a blog that uses them. It’s great to see familiar faces around blogs
Truth, plus I use the same Gravatar even on websites that don’t participate on the Gravatar movement. This gives everybody a clear understanding of who I am no matter where they are.
Or it can serve as an early warning system to ignore comments from some folks.
Gravatars are an important part of your personal branding. As @Robert just said, it doesn’t help you much if you don’t make sure that you make quality posts though.
Definitely many times more personalized than the gray blob. It’s possible the Gravatar people chose that image to make it compelling for commenters to come over and get their picture in there!
I discovered Gravatar months ago - I’m frequently surprised how many sites automatically pick them up, it’s like fire and forget, I’ve got two set up depending on which email address I use.
I have a Gravatar, but I have not been using it. So, thanks for the reminder and the link to how to use it.
Got it! Thanks!
This is new to me. I went to Gravatar to set up and my email was already in the system along with my biz name. Very weird because I don’t recall ever being on that site in my life. At any rate, I changed the pass and set up my gravatar.
I like the idea and I definitely agree that it helps with branding.
Thanks for the tip!
I’ve seen them but had no idea how to get one. Now I have one!
This is such great information, thank you!
I’ve just ordered my first pair of glasses (hopefully to fix these headaches I get regularly), so might have to update mine.
Gravatars are neat. I wish every web site that allowed comments allowed them.
I like gravatars too! I wish more people used them!
Excellent!! I took your advice as you can see!
ok, let’s test this thing! woohoo!
Thanks for introducing this! I’m gotta get one for myself as soon as i get to find a suitable picture
Thanks all, doesn’t this comment area look much friendlier with all these shiny happy people
Haha… Very interesting indeed. Some kind of a universal avatar. =) However the generic avatar is kinda scary @.@ I guess it’s to motivate you to change to a real pic asap. LOL
lol cool! more funny faces pls! time to get a new avatar!
way appreciate not being a grey blob anymore - thanks chris,
PS the siberian pups pic is adorable
wow, nice, i just join this gravatar… looks great, thanks chris…
Great branding idea! Thanks!
Chris,
I got one a couple of weeks ago (when I realized I was last to the gravatar party everywhere), so I wasn’t going to comment, then I noticed you’ve got something else going on here—a plug-in when you roll over commenters’ names. I like it.
Is that new or have I not been paying attention?
Regards,
Kelly
Anything is better than a gray blob.. .unless you are a gray blob. LOL
Wow this comment page really looks very very different as compared to others that i’ve seen before. The Gravatar really spices things up!
I think gravatars make the comment box more colourful. Its always nice to see the face behind the writing
The gravatar concept rocks
retaggr works in a similar way (and you can use your gravatar inside it) - except its not only your avatar that follows you, its your entire profile, including your lifestreaming widgets 
I have a Gravatar of my initials: RB
I’ve been branding it all over the place: business cards, letter-head, website, twitter, FB, LinkedIn, etc.
The funny thing is, when I meet someone in person, the first thing out of their mouth is how much they like the logo!
I love having an avatar. I think it really adds to the allure of commenting on blogs. Gives one an identity beyond just their name. And I’m always surprised when someone has a blog, yet does not have an avatar. It’s simply worth it.
I wrote about it but didn’t realize that the ‘g’ stands for globally recognize avatar. Thanks for the info.
Thanks for getting me interested in using gravatars.