An avatar is a small image which represent a particular user in the online world i.e. internet forums, blogs, messengers etc. It can be a mugshot or may be some cartoon, comic character or any other thing from which a person wants to associate themselves in one way or the other.

Then, what is Gravatar ?

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. (taken from the website.)

How it works ?

You create an account with Gravatar and associate an email id with it and whenever you submit a comment on any blog which supports Gravatar and specify that particular email id, the avatar which you chose will appear next to your comment.

What’s the use of Gravatar?

Personal branding : In the internet world people are involved in too many communities and an avatar can help you brand yourself and let other users recognize you instantly if you’ve got a unique and consistent avatar. Andy Beard has written an excellent example of how an avatar can help you in finding friends over various social networks.

With the help of Gravatar, without even signing up at your blog, people will be able to recognize each other and that’s where the Globally Recognized Avatar statement comes true.

How to apply Gravatar on my blog ?

Gravatar works with almost every popular CMS available on the internet and it’s pretty easy to implement too and I think people should apply this service on their preferred CMS. I prefer WordPress as the CMS and the simplest way of applying Gravatar on a wordpress blog is to use the default plugin provided by Gravatar.

In case you are using a CMS other than WordPress then you can find the list of the supported platforms over here.