Some of you may have heard of gravatars and may even have one but for most people the term gravatar means nothing. Well its your lucky day and you are going to learn something new!
When going through our site you may stumble across a comment written by me in response to an article that one of my colleagues has posted. (you can see one here: http://purplefrog.co.uk/?p=69) – or even at the top of any articles written by me.
Next to my comments you will see a small photo of me. Ok, its me in Halloween makeup from last November but that’s probably less scary than me without makeup. Trust me I am doing you a favour.
This photo and any accompanying info is my gravatar.
Gravatar stands for Globally Recognized Avatar, which means it can be used all over the web attached to your email.
In its simplest sense it is a form of identification linked to your email address. So anywhere I post comments on the web will show my face and my mini bio. It allows other readers to make a connection between me and my online presence. Connections are important in business, especially in these times where far too much is done electronically and people rarely meet.
And apart from that it makes the internet a little more fun.
So if you want one hop over to http://en.gravatar.com/ and sign up for a free account. If you do so as a result of this post please leave a comment here so I can see how scary the rest of you look!
The photo attached to this article was taken here at Purple Frog last Halloween. Over half of us turned up in costume and raised a few eyebrows amongst the clients visiting us that day! (and in case you were wondering that’s Jon under the sheet  )
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Since writing this article I have changed my avatar to one showing how I look for the other 364 days of the year. So if you were wondering which one in the photo above is me… I am the green one!
Gravatars can be changed as often as you want and the great thing is I only need to change it once to update every single appearance of it across the whole web.