WP Tavern’s Jeff Chandler Wrote an interesting tidbit today about Toni Schneider’s “No details, yet. Stay tuned.” answer when asked about the upcoming Gravatar mobile app Schnider, who traded places with Matt Mullenweg at auttomatic posted this question on the Gravatar blog. Which platform should a Gravatar app be released for first?.Readers had to choose between iOS, Android, or Other. At this time Android is out in front, with iOS trailing behind.
I found some insight, answers, and conjectures in the comments section of Chandler’s article.
Tom J Nowell said this..
I honestly don’t know what a gravatar app would do that a well done web app wouldn’t do for a fraction of the time/money/effort, we can already upload images on iOS via the web, and Android.
It was followed by a very informative and mildly lengthy comment post by Leland Fiegel, here is some of it.
If I had to guess, the mobile app is just a small part of a MUCH bigger Gravatar pivot. We’ve been seeing hints of this for quite a while with the hovercards, linking websites to your account, etc.
Keep in mind, Gravatar is not just a WordPress thing. It’s also been adopted by other very large sites like GitHub, BitBucket, StackOverflow, and others.
Could you imagine if you could “follow” Gravatar users and keep track of their activity across the massive network of Gravatar-enabled sites? We’ve all been participating in what may be one of the larger social networks on the web without even realizing it.
It’s hard to say if this was Automattic’s vision since they acquired Gravatar back in 2007, but I think Toni has recognized potential to be much bigger than just a “globally recognized avatar” service, and he’s acting on it.
I guess we’ll find out in the near future, I am curious about this plays out….How bout’ you?
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