Update Your Profile Picture Across Multiple Websites All At Once
Posted in Online Marketing | Social
by Clay Mabbitt on February 19, 2010
I visited a social network this morning that I haven’t been to in almost three months. I wasn’t surprised to see that it still had an old picture of me on my profile. I thought I had updated my picture on all my social media networks a while ago, but this wasn’t a network that I go to a lot. It did get me curious, though, so I checked some of my other profiles. It turns out I only thought I updated all my online avatars with that new photo. More than half still had my old photo up.
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could update my photo in one place and have it updated everywhere? I think so, and the folks at Gravatar agree. They’ve created a central repository where you can upload photos of yourself.
Then any social network or other website that uses Gravatar doesn’t need to ask you to upload a photo. They can look at the email address you used to sign up and pull the image straight from Gravatar. So when you update your Gravatar photo, it automatically updates your photo on every site that uses Gravatar. Makes life a lot easier.
Who uses Gravatar?
I’d love to tell you that Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIN all use the Gravatar protocol. They don’t. If you want to update your photo on these sites, you have to go to each one individually and upload an image.
Most of the action that Gravatar gets is on blogs like this one. That’s right. If you create a Gravatar account (it’s free) and leave a comment on this post, your picture will show up right next to your comment. It will also show up on comments you leave on thousands (if not tens of thousands) of other blogs.
What if you leave a comment and you don’t have a Gravatar? Nothing breaks. You’ll just have a non-descript gray icon that looks vaguely like a human being. I find that when I’m reading a blog post with a long list of comments, the ones with a unique image next to them tend to catch my eye.
Why doesn’t every site use Gravatar?
My first guess is that they want to allow you to be unique on their site. You might put a casual photo of yourself on Facebook and a more professional photo of yourself on LinkedIN. I prefer to have one photo that works in a professional or casual context, but maybe I’m in the minority.
I hate having to “log in” to comment on a blog. It’s easiest to just type in your name and include an email address and website if you want. So Gravatar certainly helps by adding in an image so that you don’t end up with the creepy silhouette picture.
That Clay. . . he’s so smart.
Great avatar, Chuckles.
Literally stumbled upon your site. I like what I see. In my opinion, a site to emulate.
Clay, you are so smart. Thanks!
I signed up with gravatar to add a custom image to my battlefield 3 profile (a goofy picture of me photoshop’d into a bf3 outfit). You can imagine my surprise and embarrassment when I find this image being applied to all of my business forum profiles!! There should be an option in Gravatar to choose which site(s) you will allow to use the image.
Dave, the idea behind Gravatar is that your avatar would appear on any and all sites without the need for you to jump through any specific hoops on a per site basis.
That being said, Gravatar does let you include multiple emails – work email and a personal email, for instance. You can use different images for each email. That way you can still have a professional image when you are acting in your work persona, and a more fun image when you’re in that role.