Gravatar to Return Next Month

Gravatar is a service that allows little avatars (called gravatars) to appear next to people's comments left on blogs. In a way Gravatar is like MyBlogLog but Gravatar's avatars appear next to a person's comments and not in a sidebar widget like with MyBlogLog. However, it wouldn't take much for them to compete with each other. In fact, this post shows MyBlogLog being used to show avatars in blog comments.

You can read a little more about Gravatar in this old post we wrote in July, 2005. The Gravatar service -- which apparently became overwhelmed from so many gravatars being loaded sometime last year -- will be returning in early February according to the Gravatar Blog (thx 901am).

The wait for Gravatar 2.0 is almost over. The new site will be released in early February with an all new interface and some great new functionality.

When the new site goes live, I'll send a one time email notification to all account holders. If you don't currently have an account, then leave a comment here (with your correct email address) and I will send you the notice as well.

Over the coming weeks I'll be posting screenshots and other tidbits to keep you updated during the final phases of testing and deployment. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed to make sure you don't miss anything!

There is a message on the Gravatar homepage as well that says there are 90,000 Gravatar accounts. They also say they are working on an improved system that will "serve gravatars expediently and reliably." That's important because if you are in the business of displaying tiny avatars billions of times it is crucial that the tiny avatars load very quickly.