Gravatar, a globally recognized avatar, was well known for the faces dotting comments on several popular blogs. WordPress themes were actually being modified to be Gravatar-enabled. Then suddenly the service was unable to support the load and stopped. Then they announced that Gravatar 2.0 will be released in early February with an all-new interface and some great new functionality.
Currently, a private beta test is on at Gravatar. They will expand the beta to include anyone who has left a comment on their blog’s first post, so get your comment into beta test gravatar.
A new feature that is expected in Gravatar 2.0 is that there is no more waiting to get your Gravatar image live. (So no more admin rating of every single gravatar). An “Abuse” link on every page will make it easy to report inappropriately rated content. In the future, the Gravatar API may be used to update your gravatar at will and from your own programs!
This downtime at Gravatar has allowed MyBlogLog to enter this unchallenged web service spectrum. Lots of bloggers have started using MyBlogLog profile images to be used besides comments. MyAvatars is a WordPress plugin that shows MyBlogLog’s avatars in your comments instead of Gravatar’s ones even if you’re not subscribed to MyBlogLog.com. Latest Comments With Avatars shows the commenters MyBlogLog Avatar rather than their name and provides a nice way of seeing who has been leaving comments, rather just listing their name.
Let’s see how Gravatar comes back to face competition from Mybloglog…