Gravatar

I thought I’d tell you about Gravatar, which is a really cool service from the owners of WordPress. Basically, you add your email addresses to a list and upload photos to match each one, depending on what photo or image you want to combine with each email address. Then when you sign up and get an account on any other site, you won’t have to upload a photo, one will be displayed for you. So if you never want a photo matched with one particular email address, don’t use it on Gravatar.

All this is quite useful, but that’s not all, you also get a profile page, where you can add your blogs, homepages, twitter, facebook, G+ or whatever you’re on. The websites part gives you an actual preview/thumbnail of your blog/homepage. ‘Verified services’ is exactly what it sounds like, you provide verification that it’s really you on Twitter etc. It’s very easy to do, as long as you’re logged into the service in the same web browser. You can also post a brief bio of yourself to go with the photo and the links.

There’s a similar service, not owned by Automattic, called About.me. It’s good, but I think I prefer Gravatar. If you’re on WordPress, you get that anyway. I signed up for About.me a year or so ago and forgot all about it for a long time, then rediscovered it. Basically it’s a business card. (Although it doesn’t have to have anything at all to do with your professional self. It’s up to you what you want to put on your page.) You just upload a photo that you own the rights to one way or another. That will be the background. (It’s the same on Gravatar). You also upload a photo/image of yourself (you can pick anything you like, again, it doesn’t have to be a selfie, unless you want to). Then you add links to your websites.

There’s a bit more social interaction here, since you can visit other people’s About pages and ‘Compliment’ them, and/or add them to lists – favorites or whatever you like.