Posted: Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 8:43 pm. Filed in Avatars.
Tags: comments, Community, gravatar
Gravatars Everywhere
You may remember a little while back we bought Gravatar. We now have the infrastructure to a point where we feel comfortable sending a lot more traffic to it.
So we’ve enabled Gravatar support for all of WordPress.com.
What’s that mean? When you have a WordPress.com account you can have an avatar by your comment, but now if someone isn’t logged in or registered but they have a Gravatar attached to their email account that will show up by their comments too. You may see a few new faces around. 
Gravatars help build a sense of community around your readers, and keep people coming back to the comments.
Since doing this the requests to Gravatar have tripled to about 2,200 requests per second on average, with peaks to 3,000 per second.
Since there are 86,400 seconds in a day that takes us to 190,080,000 Gravatar requests per day, on average.
December 6th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Sweet. Nice addition! The value just keeps getting better and better…
December 6th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Great, you put a face to half my community!
(What a stat: 190 Million Gravatar requests a day… blow my mind!)
Keep up the great work!
(Ich blogge auf deutsch–I blog in German)
December 6th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Wow, thanks.
~*~Graser 10~*~
The goofy goober!
December 6th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Awesome stuff!!
Will make my sidebar prettier.
December 6th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Pretty cool, that´s why i saw something weird this morning. Thanks a lot
December 6th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Awesome dude! Thanks Matt! I was wondering if you guys were going to end up doing something like this. In fact, I was just thinking about that the other day.
Great work!
December 6th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Impressive, most impressive.
December 6th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Cool news! Avatars make online life less anonymous and more personal.
December 6th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
oh cool. I thought it was just a feature you guys added. I didn’t realize you bought the company! I’ll have to create one.
December 6th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Cool thanks – are you planning on integrating this with OpenID?
December 6th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Very cool! Thank you.
December 6th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Hi Matt, this is great.
Will we also work the other way around? Do we get to see wordpress.com gravatars on self hosted WordPress blogs too?
December 6th, 2007 at 11:51 pm
I’ve had a gravatar for commenting on other sites and it works really slick. Maybe we’ll see less of those mysterious while silhouettes.
December 6th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
OK , I just logged out and tried it. One small detail. The gravatar shows up in the thread, but not in the widget for “recent comments”. Bummer.
December 7th, 2007 at 12:18 am
Have to thank you WP guys for Gravatar and all your efforts. WP really deserve credit. I always feel extremely glad to see new features by WP. Thank you again for this wonderful Gravatar. May all your hopes, wishes & dreams come true on coming Christmas and at the event of coming New year 2008. Good luck- very nice. To visit my blog, Indus Asia Online Journal, please click the link; http://www.iaoj.wordpress.com
December 7th, 2007 at 12:59 am
whoohoo!
And keep up the go(o)d work!
December 7th, 2007 at 1:14 am
I just posted about the traffic numbers and I’m thinking the same thing here. What kind of infrastructure is WordPress using to keep everything running so smoothly?
December 7th, 2007 at 1:22 am
I don’t know what this means but YAY! Keep up the awsome work wordpress, love your blogging tool!
~Adam
December 7th, 2007 at 1:26 am
thanks Matt.
December 7th, 2007 at 1:32 am
oh now I get it!
December 7th, 2007 at 1:35 am
I love communities!! Im happy with yours news. Thanks WP.
Alicia Yabeta
December 7th, 2007 at 1:40 am
I noticed that gravatars were working here at WP last week. Good job, guys!
December 7th, 2007 at 1:51 am
This is what’s I really need it
Thanks Matt
December 7th, 2007 at 3:06 am
Cool! Go WP!
December 7th, 2007 at 3:11 am
just want to say think you doing good work Adeel Chowdhry all the best
December 7th, 2007 at 3:19 am
Awesome numbers. Keep it up.
December 7th, 2007 at 3:40 am
Thanks!
If I gave a crap it would be that much better!
December 7th, 2007 at 3:43 am
Nice going! hurray!
December 7th, 2007 at 3:52 am
Splendid!
December 7th, 2007 at 3:53 am
Yap. this feature may definitely build a sense of belongingness, and family to all shades of wordpressers. Keep innovating, keep wordpressing!!
December 7th, 2007 at 4:08 am
Awesome idea! This definitely gives some incentive for folks to come back to blogs and comment.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:11 am
I still find ways to see how Gravatars work.. Do you have a sample page?
BTW, I signed up my e-mail addresses and avatars in Gravatars.
Thanks
December 7th, 2007 at 4:27 am
Found it! I know how it works in WP.com. However, still not sure if it works in other sites.. Will try..
Thanks Matt.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:40 am
Neat! Only getting bigger and better! I love what you guys have been doing. Thanks so much.
December 7th, 2007 at 5:29 am
cool addition
December 7th, 2007 at 5:32 am
coolness. i like.
December 7th, 2007 at 6:44 am
You really know how to take care of us. Thanks.
December 7th, 2007 at 7:00 am
Thats great news ! Me registering at once
December 7th, 2007 at 7:05 am
Good.
December 7th, 2007 at 7:38 am
Wonderful deed, boyz!
Hey, now tell me one thing… So, how do the non-registered readers get to know about this new facility? Any education program going on? I mean, there are quite some visitors to my blog who are regular ones… So, I’m asking in their context that how would they know about the gravatar and get it linked to their respective email accounts so as to have their pretty faces be seen? Is self-awareness, knowledge sharing and/or word-of-mouth the approach?
But any which way, this is going to be a boon-like for boosting up the feel good factor… Empowering communication… Hey?
Cheers, my friends!
December 7th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Thanks you Matt !!!
December 7th, 2007 at 8:29 am
Groovy!
Gravatars would make WP even more colorful and lively than it already is!
One Q: If the Email with the Gravatar registered to it is the same as the WP-registered Email?
December 7th, 2007 at 8:31 am
December 7th, 2007 at 8:39 am
good job, something that I expected.. and to be frank, you did it very fast, than I expected…
will try that out
December 7th, 2007 at 9:12 am
Super!
December 7th, 2007 at 9:28 am
nice! that’s great!!!
December 7th, 2007 at 9:31 am
Its a great feature.
keep growing..
WP my ever loving blogging platform. I’ve introduced these WP to many people and they feel cool with WP.
The way WP interacts with people and technology is out standing and exclusive.
Wishes..
உதய தாரகை
December 7th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Thanks for this nice feature Matt!
December 7th, 2007 at 10:55 am
Sip, WP emang makin cihuy! gak perlu login, eh.. foto kita bisa langsung nampang!
makasih kang matt dkk
December 7th, 2007 at 10:58 am
This is great! It’ll make a nice change to see faces instead of the blank boxes next to the comments from non-bloggers/non-Wordpress bloggers.
December 7th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
wow!
really great and I love Gravatar
December 7th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
*thumb up*
December 7th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
It’s fantastic!
Another (of millions) reason to be with WordPress!
December 7th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Cool!
Thanks wp.com!
December 7th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Thank you. This is a very nice feature.
December 7th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
very nice!
December 7th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Yeah, gmail!
December 7th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
aha!!! that explains why people who don’t have a wordpress acount have pics in my comments… thanks!
December 7th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
190,080,000?
December 7th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
That’s awesome! I finally broke down and got one a few weeks ago, so I’m excited to see more custom icons around here.
December 7th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Some deep thoughts…Does a Gravitar have more Gravitas than an Avitar?
December 7th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
I love Gravatar. You guys rock.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Wow! that’s a lot of traffic! Any chance you can combine this with pavatar? Like each blog is an openid, it could also be your pavatar url… Just a thought…
December 7th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Very interesting!
Thanks!
December 7th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Wow, this is neat! Talking about new faces, it was about to anonymous recognition…
December 7th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Gravatars: For Non-registered WordPress Commentators
WordPress.com recently announced that their newest service, Gravatar, will now be implemented throughout WordPress.com. Why do I care to blog about this? To inform anyone who leaves comments on IsShouKenMei (or any other blog community) that you can no…
December 7th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Well it looks like it’s now time for me to gravatar.
December 7th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Awsome!!!!
thats amazing WordPress keep on going!
December 7th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Excellent addition!
December 7th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
December 7th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Hey MAT sorry Hey KING MATT You Are My Love! You Are Better Man
December 7th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Wow, thats is cool
December 8th, 2007 at 1:16 am
Crickey.
December 8th, 2007 at 1:19 am
That’s great very usefull. Good work WP team!
December 8th, 2007 at 2:16 am
that’s quite a lotactually.
December 8th, 2007 at 2:17 am
Wow thats allot of Gravatars!
December 8th, 2007 at 2:20 am
just test if this avatar work
December 8th, 2007 at 8:26 am
nice
December 8th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Im logged in and without a picture as an avatar i have a gravatar!
December 8th, 2007 at 11:07 am
When are we getting our WP.com avatars functional on external Gravatar-enabled sites? I’m lazy!
December 8th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
Interesting…
December 9th, 2007 at 12:30 am
Really impressive
December 9th, 2007 at 2:32 am
Cool.
No matter logging in with wordpress account or email, our avatar both still can be seen.
Thanks Mat
December 9th, 2007 at 3:55 am
Have Gravatars been popular on any other networks? Will their use expand?
December 9th, 2007 at 6:54 am
thats really cool feature..thanks..cheers
December 9th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
What a huge number there are…
December 9th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
love it thanks
December 9th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
I think it would be a good idea if there was a message near the comment form that gravatars are enabled. I just get the feeling that some netizens just enter some phony email sometimes.
December 9th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
thanks….nice feature
December 9th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Oh, look at me.
December 9th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Thank you Matt. I love gravatars. Very sexy.
December 10th, 2007 at 1:33 am
wow, that’s a lot of requests!
December 10th, 2007 at 4:23 am
test gravatar
December 10th, 2007 at 7:15 am
wew. sweetest thing
December 10th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Gravatar all the way ! yeah !