Do you remember Gravatar, the remote avatar service that displayed your users’ avatar from their Gravatar account? It’s the same Gravatar service that lagged out so much that basically everyone removed it, now more or less replaced by MyBlogLog.
Well, it’s coming back.
In order to handle the rapidly increasing load, I’ve had to experiment with a variety of server architectures. I ask for your patience during the coming weeks as I test out a few setups. The new and improved, vastly more scalable solution, will serve gravatars expediently and reliably.
Is it too late? Will we give Gravatar another spin? I don’t know, I’m no fan of remotely hosted services since they can lag down a site pretty hard, just like Gravatar did with broken avatar images in the end. The same goes for the widget craze, with MyBlogLog being one of the main culprits. Does anyone care that Gravatar comes back, 2.0 and all? Will you consider using it?
Originally posted on January 16, 2007 @ 3:36 am
Heck no I’m not using it. Just like I dont use mybloglog. I like to host all my data.
That’s my opinion as well, although the success of MyBlogLog shows that people tend to think differently…
I guess you give something up for interaction purposes. Call me old fashioned.
I personally like to see my caricature/avatar everywhere on other people’s sites. Then again, it sucked before when it wasn’t working and all you get are big “X”es or delays in loading the pages.
I did a spyware clean up this morning, and it seemed that all that is being deleted are recognizeable cookies now. I’d much prefer a gravatar based on my email address in your comments – then a script reading a cookie on my computer and figuring out mybloglog account and avatar over there. *shrugs*
Before it flopped, Gravatar was a hugely popular service, and in my opinion, it’s one of those MySpace-esque elements that people just like.
Personally, I’m quick to ridicule them and say “don’t use their service!” But, the bottom line is that if they’re the only ones serving bio images to sites across the Web, then they’re going to be running a very popular service.
But, I still maintain that a true professional is going to do whatever he or she can to avoid having elements, be they JS or otherwise, served externally to their site.
And what if you have like 100 different commenters on a post? How long is that gonna take to load?
Fuhgetaboutit.
Hart — Seems like it would be easier to have people claiming false identities that way. Not that it’s a big issue, necessarily, but it’s easier to use someone’s email address than it is to use their computer :)